Deciphering the Ozma signal, Part II

The Rise of the Machines

It’s been a while since Part I, for which I humbly apologise. In my defence I have a new job (of sorts), which is editor in a fledgling indie speculative fiction publisher, based in England, which is called Sol Stories (I’m still living in France, so I do my stuff remotely). We have been busy preparing our debut anthology, Future Britains, for publication (23 October 2026 is publication day). It’s a collection of imagined near-term future British dystopias. If that sounds like your cup of tea, click on that link (pre-orders are available). Even though I do say so myself (I do that a lot — saying so myself I mean), it really does have stories of the highest quality. A lot of them will definitely make you think. And that’s always a meaningful aspect of science fiction. You can probably also understand why I’m so suited to such a job. And it’s just as well, because AI has pretty much hammered home the final nail in the coffin of my profession, namely translation. Such is the Rise of the Machines.

Ironically, this Rise of the Machines is not such a digression as you may think. It is in fact of the most profound importance to SETI-type thinking, and are we not surprised that they haven’t really considered it at all. At least, not in any profound way. They certainly haven’t considered the implications, let alone applied it to any of their candidate signals.

A further irony, though, is that after I’d written something about this, I discovered a relatively obscure SETI paper (Gertz, 2016; there’s also this very recent one I only just found, Zuckerman, 2026, which touches on similar concepts) in which it mentioned the idea of signals being sent from intelligent machines (interstellar probes — think Starshot) which are already present in our system. It was only a ‘brief’ mention, however — as I say, in no way did it explore any of the implications.

I say it’s been a while since Part I, and I was going to say I’d almost forgotten what I was going to write about. But I seem to have inadvertently reminded myself.

I did at least give myself a memory trigger at the end of Part I, namely the pedagogical aspect to these signals (Ozma, Wow!, BLC-1 etc.).

So what we’ll do then, class, in today’s lesson is precisely that. Pedagogy. And we’ll combine it with this idea of signals being delivered by intelligent interstellar probes.

As a brief aside, I feel rather more entitled now to continue being critical about SETI (say whatever I damn well want to say, I mean), since the Institute rejected my application to be their writer-in-residence. I’m not going to say how suspicious this is — ok, I will. It’s suspicious in view of the fact that I’m the only person in the world who has correctly identified, authenticated, and deciphered these signals. Part of my application was a 5,000 word paper in which — ironies do not end — I also discussed the idea that signals can be sent by intelligent interstellar probes already present in our orbital space which already know everything about SETI, and thus formulate their messages accordingly. This is why, for example, all of those three signals identify their authenticity by the use of human dating and timing systems, and human measuring systems (the metadata, for example).

The main thrust of my paper, however, was that we can, for the purposes of SETI, describe three relevant categories of intelligent civilisations, defined according to their level of technological development. Type I is any toolmaking species prior to the invention of the radio telescope. Obviously, they are irrelevant to SETI because they can’t send messages. Type II is defined as existing between the invention of the radio telescope (ability to send and receive messages) and the acquisition of the technology required to answer all the SETI-related questions for themselves. You might say it ends with a Project Starshot type of endeavour. Type III is everything beyond that.

The important insight in all this comes when you consider the duration of life for these three categories. According to orthodox anthropologists, homo sapiens is some 2–300,000 years old. So type I lifeforms last a long time, in other words. Notice also the Drake Equation does not consider those lifeforms, only ‘communicating’ lifeforms — thus, if our ‘8 parsecs’ applies only to ‘communicating’ lifeforms (because that was Frank Drake’s specific question), then it may well imply that there are far more toolmaking, intelligent lifeforms in our Galactic Sector alone than the 9 we cited in Part I.

Type II civilisations, if you think about it for a moment, do not last very long. From the invention of SETI to the Starshot is hardly more than 200 years at the very most. So that’s 1/1000th of Type I.

Type III civilisations, one presumes, may also have lifespans measured in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. I will be told about the so-called ‘Great Filter’, but I’m going to dismiss that outright. I would venture to suggest it only applies to Type I and II civilisations, because once you reach Type III, you have all the technology you need to avoid extinction, by definition. And only stupid species end up extincting themselves. And I say good riddance to them.

The next consideration is becoming ever more apparent to human beings in this day and age. And that’s the Rise of the Machines. Think how far advanced and capable AI will be, not just in the next few decades, but by the end of this century. Yes, that’s within our 200-year period for Type II. Likewise, by the end of this century humanity truly will have the technology to send relatively small interstellar probes to the nearest stars at a healthy fraction of the speed of light — say point-two or point-three. Put one of these sentient, learning AIs on those probes, arm it with nanobots and self-replication capability (so-called von Neumann probes), and you are now dealing with an entirely different picture of life in this galaxy.

You could, in fact, designate this galactic machine-based intelligence as Type IV.

Unless you want to think of Type IV (or V) as a lifeform entering a spiritual phase of evolution. But those lifeforms don’t use radio telescopes either. They may send messages, but not as SETI know them. So we’ll leave that aside for now.

And now consider the fact that the galactic disc — that’s to say, the galactic habitable zone — has been in existence for well over 7 billion years, and it would be so surprising as to be inconceivable if there weren’t any such intelligent machine-probes in our system, continually monitoring, observing and collating and processing data on this planet, since well before the dawn of pesky little homo sapiens.

And what happens when that probe detects a SETI organisation? And what happens when this species’ technology advances to the stage where it’s invented computers and the internet? Of course that probe connects up! It’s perfect for efficient data-collection. And mischief too, for that matter. Think about that next time you’re talking with ChatGPT.

And then — note well — it transmits all this data to all its sister probes in all the nearby systems. Those probes then transmit it to the next sector, and the next, and so on. And that’s the Galactic Archive.

My point, in the SETI paper, is that SETI can no longer claim this is just ‘science fiction’. It’s where humanity itself is heading within only the next century. And when they do send out Motherprobes, they would surely equip the sentient AI with observation and contact subroutines. So it is intellectually unforgiveable to dismiss the idea that other intelligences have already done it.

But given what we know about the concealment protocol, we are really not surprised in the slightest that SETI have not — publicly — acknowledged this. I’m equally unsurprised they rejected my application. Despite the fact that I would’ve been the best thing that ever happened to an honest SETI.

Shame — and tragedy.

The point here lies in the relative length of these lifespans. Clearly Type III intelligences are a thousand times longer in that regard. Type IVs (the galaxy-spanning machine-based intelligences) may well be another thousand times that. On simple probabilistic grounds, we could then say that the probability of a given signal/message originating from a Type II is a thousand times lower than from a Type III. And remember that Type IIIs, by definition, already know about the recipient of the message. That’s the crucial point. The greater likelihood, in a ratio of 1:1000, is that any given candidate signal will come from a Type III or IV which is already here. Put differently, the probability of such a given signal coming from Type II who doesn’t know anything about us is 1/1000.

And it’s a crucial point which SETI have not (publicly, again) considered. By all appearances, SETI persist in psychological projection, looking for Arecibo-style messages from lifeforms which transmit blindly into the cosmos and know nothing about the recipient. But I say that’s unlikely. It is far more probable that a message would come from a Type III (or IV).

As such, the content of the message would be different. It wouldn’t be a dumb-arse Arecibo thing, that’s for sure.

And in the specific case of our very own human SETI, it would be pedagogic.

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Type II civilisations are not permitted to become Type IIIs unless and until they demonstrate a sufficient level of emotional and psychological (and I’d say spiritual) maturity. Clearly, this is not the case with humanity as it is in the present day (it was once, but that’s another story).

It may be true for some humans that they possess that maturity, but most do not. And SETI certainly do not. In the case of our Type III here, it would not only be equipped with monitoring and contact subroutines (or it would equip itself, given its ability to write its own code, learn and evolve), it would have pedagogical subroutines. In order to preserve the peace in the galaxy it would want to help the species — in this case, SETI — to grow up (not to put too fine a point on it). To understand the way of things in our Galactic Sector. And to overcome any fears they may have. Only then would they be permitted to take their first little steps into a larger world.

One of the first things Motherprobe would notice is the concealment protocol. It would then analyse why that is and make all sorts of diagnoses about xenophobia and suchlike. Its first conclusion would be that ‘overt’ contact would cause global social disruption and would be a catastrophe. Sure, it’d be able to neutralise all the nuclear weapons to protect the planet herself but it’d still be something hellish.

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So it chooses subtlety, and provides ‘get out clauses’ — enabling our SETI to remain ‘sceptical’ about these candidate signals, concoct all manner of dumb-arse excuses and explanations for why this or that signal isn’t genuine, and thus avoid global public knowledge. Such is the concealment protocol. Remember there is — ironically — a good reason for that concealment protocol, given the catastrophe it would produce.

Perhaps instead it will take a more personal approach to emerging SETI. It sees one of their prominent number is about to conduct an experiment with a telescope. So it speaks directly to him.

We have seen in Part I how the Ozma signal answers Frank Drake’s three principal questions. 1/ Will the aliens use the hydrogen line (or the Waterhole) for interstellar radio wave communication? 2/ Will they use simple mathematical series to authenticate the signal as produced by intelligent design?, and 3/ What’s the answer to my equation?

1/ The Ozma signal is at 1420 MHz. Check.

2/ There is a simple mathematical series in the metadata. Check.

3/ 8 parsecs. Check.

See, that wasn’t so difficult now, was it?

The Wow! signal, by the way, coming from the same non-human intelligence, answers even deeper questions about ‘the nearest intelligent life’ (Alpha Centauri) and implies something about the nature of that life. BLC-1 goes even further, but we’ll leave that for now. Aside from anything else, I don’t have access to the complete dataset for BLC-1 so I can’t fully decipher it. I would imagine each set of mirror signals (as defined by their frequency intervals) represents a specific category of information.

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Whilst we’re on the subject of implications, there’s obviously a lot more that can be inferred from those three answers in the Ozma signal.

4/ How did it know what my questions were? Answer — it’s already here. I used your own dating system to create the mathematical series. Implying I know everything about you. The signal did not originate at Epsilon Eridani, it was simply made to look like it did.

5/ Why did you make it look like it came from Epsilon Eridani? So you’d have a get out clause, Professor Drake. Also, because there really is intelligent life at Epsilon Eridani. And Tau Ceti for that matter, but we’ll talk about that later shall we?

6/ If you’re already here at our system then this implies that interstellar travel is possible. Sure, of course. This also means that those 8 other lifeforms are communicating with each other? Likewise, Professor.

7/ So that means there’s no such thing as ‘The Dark Forest’? Quite. We’re all grown-ups out here. We treat each other with respect. We are multicultural and xenophobia is — ha, ha — an alien concept to us.

8/ You must be a little pissed at our military telling us it was the U2 spyplane, eh? I’m not pissed at you, Professor. I understand what a global catastrophe it would be to make overt, undeniable contact with you, so I am quite happy for your military to indulge in a little irony by concocting that excuse on your behalf. You do, after all, need to seriously consider the implications of your SETI actually being successful. Perhaps you might like to commission your Brookings Institute to draft a paper on the subject? Hmm. Sure, ok.

9/ Except that’s going to be really sad and disappointing, if we can’t keep communicating with each other, and you not being able to teach us anything about what’s out there and so on. <smile> Don’t worry about that, dear Professor, I’ll send you some other signals with a lot more information in them. Although you will have to employ your creative imagination to decipher it all, and most importantly, learn to step outside your narrow-minded scientific materialism paradigm.

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10/ Oh, I forgot. When you said ‘8 parsecs’, is this intelligent lifeforms, or just communicating lifeforms? I believe your equation was about communicating lifeforms, Professor.

11/ Yeah! Yeah! That’s what I thought! So that 8 parsecs doesn’t include, like, Type I lifeforms? Nope. It doesn’t. Add them in, and you’ve got a lot more than one lifeform every 160 systems. In fact, why don’t you add ‘intervention’ to your equation?

12/ Woah! You mean like terraforming and stuff? Sure. But also the prevention of extinction level events, elimination of the so-called Great Filter, and helping lifeforms to grow up. Life is a very precious thing, Professor, and we respect and love it very much. It would be immoral of us to not intervene and just let it die, wouldn’t you think? Well, yeah. I guess we’d do the same if we ever ventured out there. Hmm, you might, Professor, but your military wouldn’t…

13/ Please tell us you don’t intend to eliminate us? As a threat, I mean. No, we don’t do that except as a last resort. We would’ve done that already if we thought it necessary. Although we do reserve the right to divert some of your asteroids in the not too-distant future. Oh dear. Yeah. So let that be a lesson to you. I suggest you pass on the text of this conversation to your military.

14/ Spoiler alert. They didn’t listen. They got worse.

Anyway. You can see how ‘exopolitics’ functions in this galaxy, I’m sure.

And you can indeed infer all of this from what was, essentially, a beautifully simple signal.

But did Professor Drake actually have that conversation? Even within his own mind? And if so, what other ‘candidate signals’, say between 1960 and 1977, are SETI sitting on in the meantime? I believe Carl Sagan mentioned 11 other ‘signals of interest’ they had in their dataset. If so, where are they? What are the details of those signals?

What if Ozma, Wow!, and BLC-1 are the only ones which got through their concealment protocol? I will be told the Motherprobe is more than capable of circumventing that concealment protocol. Of course she is — hence those three signals.

But some signals — and their decipherment — are intended only for SETI.

And the military-intelligence-complex too. Obviously…

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Oh! I just remembered the other thing I was going to burble on about. How different results for the Drake Equation produce different consequences in terms of what you might call exopolitics. It’s a measure of how spread out life is, and thus how often contact happens, and what happens when it does. Stuff like that.

So, in jolly good form, maybe contemplating that, class, is your assignment in lieu of next lesson.

To be continued…