The first alien signal humanity detects might not come from a thriving civilization, but rather from one in decline, possibly sending a cry for help.
That’s the central idea behind a new paper by Columbia University astrophysicist David Kipping, who argues that the earliest confirmed signs of extraterrestrial intelligence are likely to be rare, unusually strong, and possibly tied to a civilization’s final phase.
Kipping’s research, titled The Eschatian Hypothesis, is set to appear in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is currently available on the arXiv preprint server.
The Greek word “eschatian” stems from “eschatology,” a religious term referring to the end of times, a fitting description for what may be the nature of the first alien contact.
Atypical civilizations could send the first alien signal
He suggests that just as we tend to detect the brightest and most extreme astrophysical events first, the same might apply to intelligent life.
The initial alien signal might not represent the average extraterrestrial society but could instead be a one-time event—an unstable or even dying civilization releasing a powerful burst of detectable energy.
Kipping, who directs the Cool Worlds Lab and runs a YouTube channel under the same name, draws on history to support his theory. Early discoveries in astronomy often captured only the most obvious, dramatic objects.
For example, the first exoplanets were found orbiting pulsars—not because such planets are common, but because their presence altered the pulsars’ precise timing in a way our instruments could detect. Similarly, many stars visible to the naked eye are not the most common, but rather the most luminous.
A cry for help from a dying world could be our first contact
This detection bias, Kipping argues, means we are more likely to spot a civilization during a loud, visible moment—perhaps even during collapse. In one of his videos, he speculates whether the 1977 Wow! signal could have been such a moment, a desperate message from a society nearing its end.
Rather than chasing narrowly defined signs of life, Kipping believes future searches should focus on broad, unusual signals that don’t match known natural phenomena.
These short-lived, high-intensity events are more likely to appear in wide-field sky surveys. He points to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey as key tools already making this approach possible.
If his hypothesis proves correct, humanity’s first contact may not be a grand arrival, but a fleeting, powerful sign from a distant world—one possibly asking for help before fading away.
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