The message revealed was an image depicting the structure of five amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The message was part of “A Sign in Space,” a science/art project exploring how humans might react after receiving a real message from aliens. It took the online community just 10 days to extract the message from the original data, but decoding it proved more difficult: It wasn’t until June 7, 2024, that the pair informed Daniela de Paulis, the project’s founder and artistic director, of the solution. The ESA announced their success on October 22.

According to "A Sign in Space," it was the brainchild of a group of "simulated aliens," including de Paulis, a computer scientist, a poet, a radio engineer, a physicist and space lawyer, and several astronomers and astrobiologists.

The project also received support from the SETI Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life, and the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. Decoding the message required hours of computer simulations. The father and son team succeeded in recognizing that the message included several biological features, the ESA said.

According to Intellectual Property and Innovation