In the depths of space, where darkness is nearly absolute and distances defy all comprehension, the Voyager probes continue to send information that leaves the scientific community perplexed.
One of them, Voyager 1 — the farthest spacecraft from Earth ever launched by humanity — has just recorded a signal that does not fit with anything we have seen before. It is an odd, repetitive pattern that does not correspond to any known phenomenon, raising alarms (and hopes) among those who have been searching for signs of intelligent life beyond our planet for decades.
This signal is not an isolated event. Since 2018, a radio transmission has been detected that repeats exactly every 22 minutes. It is too precise to be a coincidence and, unlike pulsars or magnetars, whose rhythms are much faster, this signal maintains a constant and unusual frequency.
Some scientists even dare to say that its pattern might seem… intentional.
But it is not the only thing that worries astronomers. The Voyager probes themselves, launched in 1977, have begun to behave strangely since leaving the solar system. Sometimes, the data they send makes no sense or seems to be interfered with by some unknown force. Some attribute it to the natural wear of the equipment; others, bolder, believe that there is something — or someone — on the other side.
And as if that weren't enough, in 2017 Oumuamua appeared, an interstellar object that passed through our solar system with a shape never seen before and behavior that defies all known physical laws.
It left no trace of gases, accelerated for no apparent reason, and its origin remains a mystery.
All this leads us to an inevitable question: are we really alone? Or have we simply not understood the messages that the universe is already sending us?