Novel beginnings

It's a clear starry night on the eve of the Indian festival of Holi. The astronomers at the GMRT, Pune, are trying to sneak past the atmosphere, which, as usual, is refracting light from distant celestial objects. Tonight, anybody can sneak into their office, for they are preoccupied with the heavens, looking for a bizarre signal that had been troubling them for a long time.

This particular signal is of immense importance to these astronomers because it seems familiar. Let's travel back to the 1970s when the 'wow!' signal was discovered. Studies on this mysterious radio wave suggested that it came from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius close to the star tau Sagittarii. The origins of this enigmatic signal are unascertained to date. Several scientists believe wow! was a message from an extraterrestrial civilization.

In 2022, phase congruency methods have shown that wow! and the new signal are the same. Something more baffling is also happening this time. The signal reappears every week for quite a time now. But every time, the same signal contains different information. But, even after four decades, decoding the entire signal is not an easy endeavour for us. The novel signal emanates from a nebula within the Sagittarius. That's what the last message contained. The question is which one of the nebulae in Sagittarius. That's what astronomers have been trying to find. They haven't found any luck, and, alas, it is time for the next signal. Hence, the atmosphere at the observatory is quite intricate, somewhat between elation and tension among the fellow researchers.

The air has enchanted even the telescope, but not in a sensible way. The main cable connecting the database servers caught fire due to the intense load. Luckily, the fire had been controlled well in time, but the upcoming signal has been lost in this mayhem. The last resort now is to manually devise a process to scrutinize and decide which nebula to lookout first. Following a long scientific meeting, it was agreed that Lagoon Nebula makes the most sense, having the highest density of G-type stars similar to the sun. Being an emission nebula, Lagoon seems to be an ideal preference. The G-type comes from the Hurtzsprung Russell (HR) Diagram, "The Stellar Encyclopaedia". The HR Diagram is essentially a plot between stellar luminosities / absolute magnitude and their temperature. The plot enables us to classify stars broadly under three categories based on their spectral classes. These categories are Giants and supergiants, Main Sequence and White Dwarfs. Soon, GMRT was geared up again to begin its new endeavour, to seek sun-like stars and their systems confided in the boundaries of the Lagoon Nebula with possible signs of life.

However, before this, there are some concepts that one must be equipped with. What is the possibility of life exotic to our solar system? And what kind of life are we expecting to discover? These are just a handful of questions humans have been trying to answer for centuries. Consequently, the process has taken a formal form and now is professionally known as astrobiology. Scientists have established several theories and conjectures. The Fermi Paradox raises the question, "Where is everybody?" while Drake's equation gives a possible solution to this question. Drake's equation is a probabilistic approach that considers various factors: the rate of star formation, the proportion of stars with planets, and many logical and technical factors that lead to the possibility of a whopping 15 million civilizations within the milky way itself. That's why astronomers at GMRT are exuberated by the wow!

After months of staring at that colourful patch in the sky, the time has come to reveal the data. The findings have been delayed because GMRT alone could not solve the mystery of the mysterious radiation. The newly launched James Webb Space Telescope, a dedicated scientific instrument that can easily pierce through the nebula's gas clouds to reveal what lies beyond, had to be employed. It did its job reasonably well because the chief scientist at GMRT has finally unveiled what the colourful clouds of the Lagoon are hiding: "The collaborative research between JWST and GMRT has worked out well. We are pleased to announce that a stellar system, much similar to our own, has been identified within the Lagoon nebula. Housing a main-sequence star with a family of six planets, there is a special among them where photosynthetic signatures have been identified. The complexities of the signals suggest life there is intelligent! The data is more than convincing, and we are ebullient to announce that life is blooming in the Sagittarius!"