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SETI scientists have a new strategy for hunting down alien signals. The initiative, the scientists reported, focuses on a different type of signal that could perhaps allow advanced civilizations to communicate across the vast distances of interstellar space. (few)
SETI scientists have a new strategy for hunting down alien signals. The new initiative focuses on a different kind of signal that could perhaps allow advanced civilizations to communicate across vast distances. (few)
Scientists have expanded the search for technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations by monitoring a region with a high density of stars towards the core of our galaxy in search of a type of signal that could be produced by possible intelligent aliens and that until now had been ignored.
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Akshay Suresh, a grad student at @Cornell, spearheads a groundbreaking mission to uncover periodic signals emanating from the core of the Milky Way called the Breakthrough Listen Investigation for Periodic Spectral Signals (BLIPSS). pic.twitter.com/X57vd3b6fU— The SETI Institute (@SETIInstitute) May 30, 2023
Until now, efforts to detect alien technological signals have focused on a type of narrow-band radio signal concentrated in a limited frequency range or unusual single transmissions. The new initiative, the scientists reported, focuses on a different type of signal that could perhaps allow advanced civilizations to communicate across the vast distances of interstellar space.
repeating patterns
These broadband pulsing signals that scientists are monitoring have repetitive patterns.– A series of pulses that repeat every 11 to 100 seconds and spread out over a few kilohertz, similar to the pulses used in radar transmission. The search is carried out in a range of frequencies that covers a little less than a tenth part of the width of an average FM radio station.
According to Akshay Suresh, an astronomy student at Cornell University and lead author of a scientific paper published in the journal Astronomical Journal describing the new work, “the signals sought in our work would fall into the category of deliberate ‘we are here’ beacons from extraterrestrial worlds.”
“It is possible that aliens use these beacons to communicate with the entire galaxy, for which the core of the Milky Way is in an ideal position. One can imagine aliens using such light-speed transmissions to communicate key events, such as preparations for interstellar migration before the explosive death of a massive star,” Suresh added.
Advanced Alien Life Search
The project, called Breakthrough Listen Investigation for Periodic Spectral Signals (BLIPSS), is the result of a collaboration between Cornell, the research organization SETI Institute, and Breakthrough Listen, a $100 million initiative to search for advanced alien life.
“In the realm of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, we embark on a journey to detect signs of technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.“, says astronomer and co-author of the study Vishal Gajjar, of the SETI Institute and the University of California at Berkeley.
“However, the nature of these signals remains a mystery, leaving us uncertain about their specific characteristics. Hence, it is crucial to explore a diverse set of signals that are unlikely to occur naturally in the cosmic environment,” adds Gajjar.
Using a ground-based radio telescope located in West Virginia, BLIPSS has focused on a strip of sky equivalent to less than one-200th of the surface area covered by the Moon, which extends towards the center of the Milky Way, some 27,000 years away. distance light. A light year is the distance that light travels in one year: 9.5 trillion kilometers.
This area contains about 8 million stars, according to Suresh. If alien life forms exist, presumably they would inhabit rocky planets orbiting in what is called the habitable zone around a star: neither too hot nor too cold.
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