Blockchain
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, or SETI, recently partnered with Filecoin, a decentralized data storage marketplace, to store a simulated alien message from Mars.
The project, A Sign in Space, was a performance designed to simulate sending an extraterrestrial coded message to Earth using the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter currently orbiting Mars.
This performance is designed with the intention of engaging communities interested in decoding and interpreting the message, bridging different cultures and areas of expertise.
In a live broadcast, Daniela de Paulis, the founder and artistic director of A Sign in Space, noted that the coded message was open to interpretation.
“Imagine abstract art, as an artist you make a painting and you assign the meaning to this painting, often not even a fixed meaning… when other people start interpreting something abstract, it can be even more diverse and we can see different kinds getting interpretations,” de Paulis said.
The processed message is securely stored using Filecoin, to ensure that the information contained in the message is preserved and available for analysis and interpretation.
Interested participants can now view and interpret the message themselves.
The role of Filecoin
Unlike traditional cloud services, Filecoin addresses data through a unique hash, Stefaan Vervaet, head of network growth at Protocol Labs – the team behind Filecoin – said in a live broadcast.
“It’s a globally unique key that lets you strip IP addresses, hostnames and the location on the planet, which means that as long as you have that hash, you can access that data from anywhere in the world,” Vervaet said.
Researchers have the ability to analyze the signal stored on Filecoin from anywhere in the world through the interplanetary file system (IPFS) gateway – a distributed file storage system that allows servers to store files and data anywhere, anytime.
Vervaet also notes that all data stored on the Filecoin network is immutable and verified daily by ecosystem participants.
“[They] are required to verify daily through cryptographic hashing that the data is still the same as it was initially,” he said. can pull you, push you off the platform and delete these datasets.”