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Alien contact or a hoax? New Rio Scale classifies signals from extraterrestrials

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An international team of researchers led by scientists from St. Andrews University in the UK and the SETI Institute in Mountain View (USA) have now redefined the Rio Scale, which evaluates the significance of potential signals from extraterrestrials.

First developed in 2001, the Rio Scale is a tool used by astronomers aiming to help the public understand the significance of potential alien signals. It also serves to determine the probability that a signal is genuinely coming from extraterrestrials, and is not a natural or human phenomenon. The scale provides a score between zero and ten, so that the public can easily determine the significance of a signal. A new study, published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, has updated a tool that has long been used to classify potential signals coming from extraterrestrial intelligence, adapting it for the modern world of technology and social media.

“The whole world knows the Richter scale for quantifying the severity of an earthquake: this number is immediately reported after an earthquake and is then refined as more data is consolidated”, explains Jill Tartar, co-founder of the SETI institute. “The SETI community are trying to create a scale to accompany any reports of potential extraterrestrial detection, and which could be refined gradually as more data becomes available. This scale should both convey the importance and the credibility of the claimed detection”, she follows. “We now need to update this scale to make it more useful and more compatible with current trends in diffusing information.”

In the past few years, numerous dubious signals have be reported as “extreterrestrial”, and it is becoming more and more difficult to separate the real from the fake. To this end, an update has just been completed. The new study, directed by Doctor Duncan Forgan, explains the nature of the changes in the media, the growth of non-stop information flow and the new landscape of social media. Coupled with an increase in detection efforts by teams worldwide, the Rio Scale 2.0 is nowadays increasingly relevant.

Jill Tarter proposes that this new scale could be used like the Richter Scale. A signal could be immediately rated, and the rating could be continually updated as new information emerges. The new Rio Scale has been submitted to SETI’s Standing Committee of the International Academy of Astronautics for official ratification. The key to further research will be the development of a group of coherent terms for describing the signals, which would be universally used between researchers and the media.

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