Skywatcher Group’s Experiments May Be Reaching 3I/ATLAS as Debate Grows Over Private Alien Contact and SETI Protocols

SETI, meanwhile, is taking a far more conservative stance. Its post-detection protocols, developed jointly with the International Academy of Astronautics, state that no response to a potential extraterrestrial signal should be made without international consultation. Those guidelines exist to ensure that first contact—if it occurs—is transparent, scientifically validated, and globally coordinated. Yet Skywatcher’s experiments, and others like them, fall completely outside these safeguards. If their signaling devices are indeed transmitting electromagnetic or optical patterns into space, then they may already be participating in a form of communication the scientific community neither condones nor monitors.

From an investigative standpoint, the implications are staggering. If a private group can reach beyond Earth’s atmosphere using homegrown technology and consciousness-driven methods, who governs their conduct? The United States has no clear legal framework regulating “contact attempts” with non-human intelligences, telepathic or otherwise. Communication law, defense law, and international treaties on outer space all fail to anticipate this scenario. That leaves an unregulated frontier where belief, science, and risk converge.