SETI: Alien search finally restarts with large radio telescope

The organized search for artificial extraterrestrial signals has become very quiet in recent years – also because there were no observation opportunities. But now the project is once again gaining access to a large radio telescope.

The US National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array (VLA) will now also selectively collect data of value in the search for corresponding signals. “The VLA is the standard instrument for radio astronomers, but this is the first time we’ve used it for a long-range and continuous search for technosignatures,” said Andrew Siemion of the SETI Institute, where the search for extraterrestrial signals is concentrated.

The system is one of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world. It consists of 27 antennas spread over around 50 kilometers of desert terrain and can thus simulate an antenna of this size. Since 2017, the VLA has been involved in a project called the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS), a large-scale radio survey of 80 percent of the sky.

Limited copy

This creates gigantic amounts of data that would be far too large for a complete analysis by the SETI researchers. Therefore, in the future, a fairly narrow range of the observation spectrum from the entire data flow will be sent to the SETI Institute. The researchers assume that all signals from an intentionally constructed transmitter contain corresponding narrow-band components, so that an analysis of the spectrum is sufficient to identify artificial sources. Processing of the new data will be performed by the Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster (COSMIC) developed by the SETI Institute in collaboration with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the Breakthrough Listen Initiative. “COSMIC works commensal, so it works in the background and uses a copy of the data that astronomers take for other scientific purposes,” said Paul Demorest, scientist and group leader for VLA/VLBA Science Support at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “This is an ideal and very efficient way to obtain large amounts of telescope time to search for rare signals.”

Unlike many previous SETI observations, a variety of transmissions, such as pulsed and transient signals, can be detected with this new experiment. The range of frequencies to be monitored is unprecedented, and the number of star systems studied will be around ten million.

See also:

Space, aliens, ufo, extraterrestrial, seti, extraterrestrial intelligence, science fiction, abductions, extraterrestrial phenomenon, extraterrestrial contact, unidentified flying objects, extraterrestrial mythology., search for extraterrestrials, radio signals, extraterrestrial intelligence, universe exploration, telescopes