Could stormy space weather be blocking alien messages?

Stormy space weather could be making it harder to communicate with aliens, according to new scientific research.

Researchers from the SETI Institute (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence) - which is partly funded by Nasa - said that things like solar storms and plasma turbulence can make radio signals from the distant cosmos harder to detect.

They think this could be because the storms can broaden radio communication signals across many more frequencies - a bit like tuning into every radio station at once instead of just one - which can make it more difficult to find a specific signal using traditional techniques.

"SETI searches are often optimized for extremely narrow signals. If a signal gets broadened by its own star's environment, it can slip below our detection thresholds, even if it's there, potentially helping explain some of the radio silence we've seen in techno-signature searches," said Dr. Vishal Gajjar, Astronomer at the SETI Institute and lead author of the research.

The scientists were able to figure this out by looking at the effects of space weather and activity using radio transmissions from spacecraft in our solar system.

They then widened the test to the environments of stars further away and studied the results.

The findings mean that scientists may have to change the way they listen out for potential messages from space.

"By quantifying how stellar activity can reshape narrowband signals, we can design searches that are better matched to what actually arrives at Earth, not just what might be transmitted," said Grayce C. Brown, co-author of the study and research assistant at the SETI Institute.