Exploring space without leaving Earth 2: The Lone signal...

Yesterday we looked at how, using the kind of radio dishes James Bond super-villains like, we can scan the surfaces of other planets, moons, and asteroids, with radio energy instead of material space ships.

But what about the big question: Where the hell are the aliens, and what the f*** is with that anal probe?

Well, radio energy can help with that to. A group of scientists are targeting the Gliese 581 star system - a star system with planets that could have liquid water - with a sustained radio signal, in hopes of contacting any intelligent life that might be lurking there.

Video above: One of the Lone Signal team explains why they want to find ET, but will settle for C3P0.

Messages have been sent into space in the past, but they've been one off things. Even if there are aliens in their path, the odds of them just happening to listen at the right moment o hear are pretty long. Project Lone signal will try to up the odds by sending a sustained stream of radio waves, to a target known to have Earth sized planets with possible habitable conditions, using this refurbished dish to launch them:



.....And if Vader and his guys turn up, and start capping and lightsabering your granny (I don't know why he's got it in for her, but....), then we know the experiment was a successful failure......