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A loosely formed group of scientists around the world called Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, is regularly monitoring the heavens in hopes of catching any trace of communication from aliens, according to the BBC.

About two dozen scientists watch for signals coming in from the world’s largest radio telescopes. If any of the telescopes were to detect any sort of unusual signal from the cosmos, the signal would have to be confirmed by other telescopes, said Seth Shostak, SETI’s principal astronomer. All in the SETI community agree that if aliens reach out to Earth, that Earth should respond. But the scientists don’t agree on what to say or how to say it.

“When we’re dealing with an alien mind - what they might appreciate, what they might regard as interesting or beautiful or ugly - will be so much tied to their neural architecture that we really couldn’t guess,” says Paul Davies of Arizona State University. “So the only thing that we’ve got in common has got to be at a mathematics and physics level.”