It's quiet out there: scientists fail to hear signals of alien life
Astronomers have come up empty-handed after scanning the heavens for signs of intelligent life in the most extensive search ever performed.
Researchers used ground-based telescopes to eavesdrop on 1,327 stars within 160 light years of Earth. During three years of observations they found no evidence of signals that could plausibly come from an alien civilisation.
[...] During the three-year effort, the astronomers scanned billions of radio channels and filtered out any signals that appeared to come from nature or equipment on Earth. Having dismissed millions of signals this way, the team was left with only a handful of "events". On closer inspection, these too turned out to have prosaic explanations.
The Breakthrough Listen team described their latest attempt to track down ET in two papers released on Tuesday, which made all the data available to the public. "There could be a signal in the data that we didn't detect this time around, but others can now look through it to see if we missed anything," Price said.
Also at Astrobiology and The Register.
The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Public Data, Formats, Reduction and Archiving
UC Berkeley SETI Program GitHub
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New technologies, strategies expanding search for extraterrestrial life:
Emerging technologies and new strategies are opening a revitalized era in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). New discovery capabilities, along with the rapidly-expanding number of known planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, are spurring innovative approaches by both government and private organizations, according to a panel of experts speaking at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Seattle, Washington.
New approaches will not only expand upon but also go beyond the traditional SETI technique of searching for intelligently-generated radio signals, first pioneered by Frank Drake's Project Ozma in 1960. Scientists now are designing state-of-the-art techniques to detect a variety of signatures that can indicate the possibility of extraterrestrial technologies. Such "technosignatures" can range from the chemical composition of a planet's atmosphere, to laser emissions, to structures orbiting other stars, among others.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the privately-funded SETI Institute announced an agreement to collaborate on new systems to add SETI capabilities to radio telescopes operated by NRAO. The first project will develop a system to piggyback on the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) that will provide data to a state-of-the-art technosignature search system.
"As the VLA conducts its usual scientific observations, this new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we're already collecting," said NRAO Director Tony Beasley. "Determining whether we are alone in the Universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and NRAO telescopes can play a major role in answering it," Beasley continued.
"The SETI Institute will develop and install an interface on the VLA permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky," said Andrew Siemion, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute and Principal Investigator for the Breakthrough Listen Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley. "This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search," he added.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday June 19 2019, @09:20PM (13 children)
There is always that option that we are all alone and/or the most advanced form of line in the universe and/or the other aliens are so far beyond our form of comprehension of what life is that we don't even register to each others as life and/or they just don't give a fuck about us -- the backwards ape people of that blue water world.
That said the Ancient Astronaut theorists are not going to like that, I'm sure they do believe it's some kind of conspiracy afoot.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Hartree on Wednesday June 19 2019, @09:45PM (2 children)
Well, it could be like a civilization of dogs declaring there can't be intelligent life out there because by now there surely would have been time for their scent to get here.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday June 20 2019, @06:59AM (1 child)
Or as the agnostics tell the atheists: God stinks.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @11:58AM
No, I think you're mistaken. That was Diogenes of Sinopel!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday June 19 2019, @09:45PM (4 children)
I still think we're looking at a very tiny amount of the search space, and possibly the most interesting stuff (radio/TV equivalent broadcasts) is unrecognizable after it travels light years.
If you read TFA, Breakthrough Listen was looking for technosignatures/megastructures/beacons. Very obvious "WE ARE HERE" stuff. The innumerable and very weak TV and radio broadcasts that have been emitted on Earth may be virtually undetectable.
Direct observation of exoplanets to look for signs of biology or other unnatural features might turn out to be a much more fruitful approach. But if we don't find anything within 100 light years, expanding the search area to 1,000 or 10,000 light years could require additional decades to put together bigger and better space telescopes.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday June 19 2019, @09:58PM (2 children)
We're trying to do a stock take by peering through the Warehouse door keyhole.
I don't know what the answer is though. Space is big.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @03:03AM (1 child)
For one billionth of the time that the warehouse has been operating, across 1,300/100,000,000,000 of the shelves.
Call me when we reach 1% coverage with still no signs. Until then, this is like asking: are there platypuses on Earth? by standing in one random spot, opening your eyes for one second, then counting all the platypuses you don't see there.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday June 20 2019, @08:33PM
What? Venomous underwater cats with a duck's beak? Of course there bloody aren't, that would be mental.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @02:59AM
It's not just a search space, it's also a search time, and we've barely flipped the shutter open for the briefest of moments.
H. sapiens has been transmitting RF less than 100 years, less than 1/50th of our "civilization" has been transmitting, and civilization rise or fall, there's pretty good odds that we're going to be ramping down our transmission power and intelligibility to others pretty severely in the next 100 years. I Love Lucy was somewhere near the high point of our broadcast power days.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Wednesday June 19 2019, @09:48PM (3 children)
There still could be life around neighboring star systems. Microbial, which we'll probably be able to detect in the near future. But it's also possible that intelligent lifeforms exist, that don't need radio anymore. Or aquatic creatures on a water world, could be highly intelligent, but we're not going to find out about them until we've managed interstellar travel. I can't imagine a water world being highly technological, even if its inhabitants are much smarter than us.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @03:08AM (2 children)
Your failing, not theirs. Picture a water world with 0.1 Earth gravity and a big moon in a low swinging elliptical orbit. Now, picture two more water worlds like that in the same solar system. Those water creatures would have both a much easier time getting into space than we do, and a much greater incentive to do so.
~250 billion stars per galaxy, ~100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, anything physically possible that you can imagine most likely exists somewhere.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Thursday June 20 2019, @08:05AM (1 child)
Yes, but on a water world I can't imagine melting furnaces to extract metal out of ore. Electronics would be difficult to create too I guess.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @02:06PM
As you say, lack of imagination. If we're ever lucky enough to meet spacefaring water-worlders, maybe they'll be friendly and explain how they build their ships (in ways we haven't yet imagined)... if they even need ships.
As far as we can interpret the fossil record, we're the first species to do serious environmental modification (beyond beaver scale), out of hundreds of millions of years of species that were perhaps as intelligent as us, or even moreso. It could be dumb luck 50/50, or even more in favor of water dwelling species to evolve to spacefaring capability. Sure, they probably won't be starting with cellulose combustion in air to heat ore to refine metals - that was our dumb luck path - theirs will be different, and likely as difficult for us to manage as fire is for them.
As for electronics - I don't have much of a problem at all conceiving of water dwellers evolving photonic computing before electrical... talk about another flash in the pan, fire has been around for millennia but electricity is barely 200 years in practical use - surely there are technologies as capable as electricity for information processing and communication, we just haven't stumbled into widespread practical application of them yet.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 20 2019, @02:55AM
Yep, until the Vogons decide it's time for a hyperspace bypass right through the Sol system...
All I think this study means is that ET thinks high power radio broadcasting is dumb and only broadcast for about 100 years before going 100% to a cable delivery subscription model. Stick that in your Drake equation and then tell me how many stars with transmitting life you're going to have to scan to catch ET in that brief century of freely transmitted easily understood RF signals. Hint: much much greater than 1300.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Wednesday June 19 2019, @09:53PM (3 children)
we'll probably find radio is seen as an archaic technology by other entities, using brute force to propagate a wave? consciousness is the new radio.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 19 2019, @09:55PM (2 children)
Radio is just like, light beams, man.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Wednesday June 19 2019, @11:17PM (1 child)
to me it doesn't matter what wavelength, point to point just seems inefficient. quantum entanglement would be closer to the mark.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @03:51AM
This...
Any ideas on how to do this? Anyone?
Sync with a very fast pulsar? Hell I'm just to stupid to even wonder about such a radio.
One thing I'm sure of; is intelligent life will talk to each other over long distances. It's the nature of civilizations to want to find others.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Wednesday June 19 2019, @09:58PM
160 light years. Earth's radio signals have barely gotten half that far.
Best we can do from this is mark 1,327 stars out of 200-400 Billion stars in our Galaxy off the list of possible technological civilizations that are equal or slightly older to Earth's.
And the absence of radio signals does not mean the absence of life.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 19 2019, @10:14PM (1 child)
Do stars have consciousness? Do they exchange information with other stars?
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Wednesday June 19 2019, @10:28PM
If they do, and we start mining ours for heavier elements and extend its lifespan several times over, would it thank us?
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by corey on Wednesday June 19 2019, @10:21PM (1 child)
Perhaps advanced life forms are using RF for their comms but, like humans are doing now, use phased array techniques to steer beams of emissions at where they want it, rather than wasteful omnitropic transmissions. Then the rest of space only sees background noise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 19 2019, @10:35PM
Radar is probably our most prominent signal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 19 2019, @10:54PM (1 child)
What a waste of storage space... think how much pr0n was sacrificed for this stupid project.
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Wednesday June 19 2019, @11:31PM
But if the researchers win, they could tap from the holy grail: interstellar prawn.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @01:05AM
What were these guy thinking?
If we want to find the galactic elite, we need to be 1337, not 1327.
It's hard being the ultimate h4x0r. Do I have to do everything?
Sheesh!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @01:10AM
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Thursday June 20 2019, @07:33AM (3 children)
The window of large, strong, obvious EM emissions is tiny.
We're almost past it ourselves.
If you listened out for, say, cellphone traffic, or satellite broadcasts (which point the wrong way, but principle is the same), guess what you'll hear? Encrypted traffic.
Guess what one of the main design goals of encrypted traffic is? To remain indistinguishable from random noise. You'd also find it hard to find anything of use on a single channel as not only did we quickly learn to split transmit and receive frequencies, but we then made most things frequency-hop too.
What, precisely, are we blasting out into space that you'll hear in an EM band? Are we regularly flashing a beacon out to the solar system? No. Are we using huge, powerful, single-frequency signals aimed (incidentally or not) out into space? No.
The era of Morse code, broadcast analogue TV, etc. was exceptionally short in galactic terms. The chances of that signal reaching anywhere interesting, people being able to catch it, and then them spotting that it's an interesting signal is approaching zero. And the chances of them doing so with modern (i.e. last 30 years) signals is absolutely zero.
And if that's true for us, then it's true for them - especially given that Drake's equation has a number of components that tell you how unlikely you are to encounter a civilisation anywhere near the same level of sophistication as we were at the height of our "sending signals into space" era, at just the right time.
It's hard enough, with published papers, filed patents, specification sheets and software radios, to pick up and interpret even a GSM signal (not impossible but that's kinda cheating with those advantages). Doing the equivalent to a signal with light years of degradation and interference, written in an alien protocol, and not aimed at us? Not a chance.
Any even Hawking said that we don't want ourselves to be heard. I'm sure other civilisations came to the same conclusion. Hell, we basically don't want *each other* to hear *each other* on this planet (the whole reason behind encryption), let alone an unintended alien third party.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday June 20 2019, @01:32PM (1 child)
Your points are all absolutely valid. As we progress, we blast less power into space. While we may use more and more channels, the power on any one of those channels tends to drop with time, as technology advances. And a lot of stuff is going on dedicated cables, whether copper or fiber.
Your point about encryption is also valid, although picking up random noise where it shouldn't be is still something recognizable.
However, there's a third point. Maybe obvious, but people tend to underestimate it: a light-year is a huge distance, and the inverse-square law is a bitch. Picking up a non-directional signal of ordinary power, from dozens of light-years away? Forget about it. We don't have equipment that sensitive. Unless the planet we're looking at is specifically broadcasting a signal in our direction, we are not going to hear them.
FWIW, one of the claims of the proposed Square Kilometer Array [wikipedia.org] is that it would be the first instrument that might be sensitive enough to hear ordinary signals across near interstellar distances.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Thursday June 20 2019, @01:53PM
Yes, in that tiny sliver of time, for the tiny proportion of incredibly weak signals that we can receive, in those tiny areas of the galaxy just the right distance away, from those civilisations that just so happen to be broadcasting, etc. etc. etc.
The numbers quickly make it infeasible. And we're looking for patterns... we're not looking for noise, because noise is everywhere. A constant random noise is not a pattern, it occurs naturally. An on-off random noise is incredibly rare, even in modern radio - the idle channels are still transmitting random noise so that you don't know they are idle (which gives away something about the content of the message). And then we're hoping to spot that from *across the galaxy*, not long after our first image of a black hole, and where we're still discovering that some stars have planets we've never observed before.
There is also an argument that - though discovering a foreign signal might be the most amazing discovery in all of mankind... we can't actually *do* anything with it. Likely it won't be intelligible. And even if it was, or even if we try to blindly talk back, we have to hope they see something. By the time that signal gets back, it's going to be *decades* until the first response. We're all just kind of hoping that there's an alien civilisation hiding totally out of sight that will magically receive our signal, pop up, reveal itself, break all our known laws of physics and visit us where up until now we haven't seen hide nor hair of them, or their technology, and which it'll do just to meet us and be friendly. There's no sensible reason why they would, certainly no positive one!
It would be like us scooting across to the Moon just because we discovered a colony of ants, and that's just never going to end well (unless you want to buy a Moonant as a pet in a few years time!). They will likely learn *nothing* from us, and we likely have nothing of value to them if they're capable of such things.
And if they aren't... then it's postcards-at-decade-long-intervals and likely won't meet up for centuries even if both sides dedicated the entirety of their civilisation to that task.
Knowing that the universe is as quiet as it is is quite useful. If there were things to be picked up easily, we probably would have, and we'd probably have an accurate count of civilisations across the galaxy by now, and we might be able to communicate even. But knowing how empty it is, it's now just clear that we don't have much use for the rest of the galaxy.
We can't even take care of ourselves, traipsing halfway across the universe to talk to others really doesn't seem a good use of our time and resources.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 25 2019, @08:01AM
Good post, but...
Forget the encryption, forget the short window. Even if we were broadcasting analogue TV continuously, for millions of years, would it be noticed?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#We_are_not_listening_properly [wikipedia.org]
So... no, unless a random star system with life passed close by the Sun, and other conditions were right.
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