NASA — Decoding a message from another world
A NASA history volume on what we would face if a signal arrived full of knowledge made by a different civilization, and how hard that message would be to read.
Open NASA sourceRoom three
Galactic Encyclopedia
NASA papers, SETI research, and government documents on whether a civilization could store knowledge across the galaxy. Sources and speculation. Not proof of contact.
Featured sources
NASA/JPL — Searching for extraterrestrial probes
A NASA technical record on instruments and a method for looking in the solar neighborhood for signatures that could mark a robotic probe.
Open NASA/JPL recordNSA / Department of Defense — Talking with another intelligence
Cryptologist Lambros D. Callimahos on how mathematics and symbols might carry a message between us and a more advanced civilization.
Open original DoD/NSA paperThe Galactic Internet — a network that keeps knowledge
SETI scholarship on probes and nodes spread through the galaxy, so knowledge could collect over immense time and be stored in more than one place.
Open scholarly sourceSETI Institute — Is the galaxy already connected?
A modern SETI note on tight, directional links, including gravitational-lens nodes, that ordinary searches might almost never catch.
Open SETI Institute sourceThe solar gravitational lens — a possible conduit
A peer-reviewed paper on how the Sun’s gravity could amplify a laser across interstellar distance, and how that might serve a Galactic Internet.
Open peer-reviewed paperNASA — The history of SETI
NASA’s own history of its formal search for extraterrestrial intelligence, with the major publications on interstellar communication.
Open NASA SETI historyOne file, set apart
CIA Reading Room — “Galactic Federation HQs,” 1988
The file is real. The remote viewer’s report is unverified, and it is not evidence that such a federation exists.
Open the CIA documentResearch library
- Cosmos, episode 12 — Encyclopaedia Galactica
- Jon Lomberg — the encyclopedia paintings
- George Basalla — Civilized Life in the Universe
- Bracewell, 1960 — interstellar probes
- Kardashev, 1964 — how much a civilization could send
- Artifact SETI — a probe in the solar system
- Benford, 2019 — lurker probes
- Orion’s Arm — Encyclopaedia Galactica (fiction)
- CIA — the Agency’s account of the psychic research
- CIA Reading Room — a Gateway record
- NASA — what counts as UAP evidence
Original documents are hosted by their respective government, scientific, or academic sources. External links may change.