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New Debate over How to Contact Alien Life

Researchers writing in Nature this week argue that radio signals are not the most efficient way of alerting an extraterrestrial intelligence to our existence -- and that anyone out there who is trying to send out a similar message is likely to have reached the same conclusion.

The scientists recommend sending, and searching for, an interstellar message in a bottle. NPR's David Kestenbaum reports.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

David Kestenbaum is a correspondent for NPR, covering science, energy issues and, most recently, the global economy for NPR's multimedia project Planet Money. David has been a science correspondent for NPR since 1999. He came to journalism the usual way — by getting a Ph.D. in physics first.