By 
September 2nd, 2020
Pacific Ocean on planet Earth as seen from space. 3D illustration with detailed planet surface. Elements of this image furnished by NASA.
The hunt for technosignatures from extraterrestrials is getting an overhaul of existing data.
To date, no confirmed technosignatures have been detected, but as more and more comprehensive searches are carried out, astronomers can place tighter and tighter limits on how many stars in our neighborhood might be home to powerful radio transmitters – and the minds that constructed them.
Today, Breakthrough Listen and the University of Manchester announced a reanalysis of Breakthrough Listen data to include other stellar objects in the field that promises to produce the most comprehensive SETI search to date.
Frank Drake with cosmic equation to gauge the presence of intelligent life in the cosmos. The Drake Equation identifies specific factors believed to play a role in the development of civilizations in our galaxy.
Credit: SETI Institute
Within the beam
“We now know that fewer than one in 1,600 stars closer than about 330 light years host transmitters just a few times more powerful than the strongest radar we have here on Earth. Inhabited worlds with much more powerful transmitters than we can currently produce must be rarer still,” says Masters student Bart Wlodarczyk-Sroka at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.
When Breakthrough Listen searches for technosignatures coming from a nearby star, it is also sensitive to more powerful potential technosignatures from other stars within the telescope’s beam.
SETI searches have the potential to detect whether the neighboring M31 Andromeda Galaxy is a locale of advanced technology and civilizations.
Credit: Bill Schoening, Vanessa Harvey/REU program/NOAO/AURA/NSF
What’s new is determining new, more stringent limits on the prevalence of technosignatures, without the need to gather any new telescope data.
Resources
For more information on this new effort, go to the paper, “Extending the Breakthrough Listen nearby star survey to other stellar objects in the field,” at:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.09756.pdf
Supplementary material, including the catalog of Gaia stars used in the analysis, along with an accompanying video and artwork, are available at:
Posted in Space News
