Breakthrough Listen publishes first analysis of 692 stars in ET search

https://www.universetoday.com/135281/breakthrough-listen-publishes-first-analysis-692-stars-et-searchi/

by acro • 9 years ago

28 16 9 years ago

pmoriarty• 9 years ago

"The Green Bank Telescope searched for these signals using its “L-band” receiver, which gathers data in frequencies ranging from 1.1 to 1.9 GHz ... they conducting three five-minutes observation periods, while also conducting five-minute observations on a set of secondary targets"

Does this seem like a really short timescale to anyone else?

Of course, anything on human timescales is but the blink of an eye on geological, never mind astronomical timescales, but it still fells like you'd have to get awful lucky to catch something in just the 5 to 15 minutes you happened to be listening on a narrow range of radio frequencies.

madengr3• 9 years ago

Yeah, I have read to detect a transmission from several light years, it would take a transmitter like Aeroceibo. Also must assume the alien politicians would fund it long enough.

madengr3• 9 years ago

From what I have read, most of this SETI data processing involves very long FFT to channelize down to 1 Hz BW. However, assuming any alien signals would be like our digital comms, those signals are pseudo noise like, so using very narrow bandwidths just reduces the signal too. These narrow bandwidths would only be good for CW signals?

technics256• 9 years ago

If I recall my EE schooling correctly, the 1Hz resolution bandwidth significantly reduces the noise floor of the receiver, and this allows you to resolve smaller signals from the noise. Also, assuming it is sweeping, having a digital signal with greater bandwidth is no problem to find.

madengr3• 9 years ago

Yes, EE here too, but if the signal you're trying to detect is also noise like (pseudo random), it is averaged out with the noise. That's why I'm thinking that any moderately complex signal won't be detectable. We'd have to detect a signal that aliens purposely sent out at a very narrow bandwidth; essentially seconds per bit, or even narrower.

kirykl2• 9 years ago

Sounds a little like taking a few sniffs and hoping to smell campfire smoke 100 km away. Eventually I hope we'll find more effective methods for SETI

mikiem• 9 years ago

But these "few sniffs" amount to 8 Petabytes of data, according to the article.

kirykl2• 9 years ago

But what? If anything that 8 petabytes is 1/1000000 of a sniff in Universe scale

joshuaheard• 9 years ago

The data is analyzed on a distributed network. You can download the app and have it run in the background or as a screensaver. If ET is found, they promise to credit the computer owner that actually finds it. Just think, you might be the one!

https://seti.berkeley.edu/participate/

I have been doing this since 2005, have processed over 5 million units, and am in the 98th percentile worldwide.

dude01• 9 years ago

I hope we find some ETs. Otherwise I'm worried we're either:

- in a simulation, and they didn't bother to simulate other parts of the universe in high fidelity.

- in a zoo, and somehow we're blocked from seeing other civilizations.

I don't buy, for an instant, that in a universe of this size, we'd be the only life forms.

wyldfire• 9 years ago

But the speed of light is kinda slow relative to the size of the universe, right?

nebulus• 9 years ago

I've always thought that this was the most likely reason for our simulation, and the most telling evidence for it:

In a universe where intelligent life is common throughout the galaxy, there'd be no way to tell what our species would have become left to its own devices. What discoveries we would have made, what cultures we would have created, what our destiny might have been.

The only way to discover it would be to simulate human life on a planetary scale in a universe where other intelligent life is mysteriously absent. Which is exactly the situation we find ourselves in.

dogma1138• 9 years ago

We've been transmitting for less than 150 years, our species has been around for what is now believed to be 250k or so years, life on earth is about 4 bln years old.

Even if we continue to survive as a technological species for another 1000-5000 years and not push ourselves to extinction even if we go 10,000 years it's still a spec on the timeline of our galaxy not to mention our universe.

It's very likely that life is very common, technological species might also be common but this is on universal time scales it's also pretty likely that because species and entire planets go extinct all the time that the they simply do not overlap on universal time scales.

dghughes• 9 years ago

I thought this may have been NIROSETI but it isn't I wonder how NIROSETI is doing they search by looking at near infrared signals.

Here is what they do: >Near-infrared Optical SETI (NIROSETI) has the advantage that light at infrared wavelengths is less affected by interstellar gas and dust; an infrared signal can be seen at greater distances than an optical signal at shorter wavelengths. Also, it takes less energy to send the same amount of information with an infrared signal than at shorter, optical wavelengths.

Breakthrough Listen publishes first analysis of 692 stars in ET search

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