In 2005, two researchers, theoretical physicists Stephen Hsu of the University of Oregon and Anthony Zee of the University of California, Santa Barbara, argued that there could be a message left by the creator of the Universe to prove his or her existence.
The duo proposed that if there was a message, it could have been left in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the leftover radiation which permeates through the Universe since the Big Bang.
The CMB dates back to around 380,000 years after the Big Bang when light first began to emerge as the Universe began to cool.
It is this first light that can still be faintly detected and is ubiquitous through the entire cosmos.
The fact it is everywhere is the reason why the pair first believed it to be the perfect place to hide a secret message from the creator of the Universe.
Now one researcher has gone on the hunt for the theorised message.
Astrophysicist Michael Hippke of Sonneberg Observatory in Germany and Breakthrough Listen translated the temperature variations in the CMB into binary bit-stream – a series of zeros and ones which is used for the communication of digital data. However, he found absolutely nothing.
Mr Hipke wrote in arXiv – a pre-print scientific outlet which has not been peer-reviewed: “[Hsu and Zee’s] assumptions were, first, that some superior Being created the Universe.
“Second, that the Creator actually wanted to notify us that the Universe was intentionally created.
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It is also known that the visibility of the CMB is different throughout the Universe.
For example, the CMB can barely be seen here due to the presence and emissions from the Milky Way.
As such, under Hus and Zee’s theory, any civilisation would only have a limited patch of the sky to go by.
In this case, Mr Hipke determined that 1,000 bits of information was a fair amount to try and decipher.
For reference, the standard computer can process around 64 bits of information, so 1,000 throughout the entire Universe is practically nothing.
But through his search and translating it to binary, Mr Hipke said there is no semblance of a message from a higher power.
He said: “I find no meaningful message in the actual bit-stream.
“We may conclude that there is no obvious message on the CMB sky. Yet it remains unclear whether there is (was) a Creator, whether we live in a simulation, or whether the message is printed correctly in the previous section, but we fail to understand it.”