SETI Researchers Have Begun Scanning the Backgrounds of Images for Alien Signals - ExtremeTech:
The Breakthrough Listen Initiative, funded by billionaire Yuri Milner, is currently working to scan a million stars in our galaxy for evidence of intelligent life. There are no hits yet, but a new study proposes another way Breakthrough Listen could aid in the search for extraterrestrial life. Radio telescopes are not only sensitive to the target star but also to the space surrounding it. Perhaps, the new analysis suggests, there could be some aliens photobombing in the background.
Most searches for alien intelligence focus on stars in our galaxy, which is plenty vast to keep SETI researchers busy, but the pair behind the new preprint study think we could be looking farther afield. Michael Garrett of the University of Manchester and Andrew Siemion from the Berkeley SETI Research Center are more interested in the "astronomical exotica" in the deep background of Breakthrough Listen observations.
This research builds on a previous study from Siemion and Garrett that explored the impact of the European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope, which has measured the location and proper motion of a billion stars in our galaxy. According to Motherboard, the pair explored how knowing the locations of foreground and background stars in an observational field can aid in the hunt for intelligent life. And it should work similarly for objects in other galaxies, provided we have similar distance measurements.
[...] They next analyzed 469 Breakthrough Listen targets to see how many extragalactic objects might be lurking in the background. They came up with a whopping 143,024 objects.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by looorg on Saturday September 24 2022, @01:46PM (7 children)
Is this Astro-Steganography? Do we really think that the aliens are hiding their communications from us in plain sight just cause we can't find it? They might then as well use encrypted communications so the other aliens can't tap into them. So not only do we have to find it, now we have to crack/decrypt it to. Or their communication is so alien we can't even find it or imagine what it would be like, hence we can't find it or anything that looks like what we would interpret as communication.
Why isn't the reason that we can't find anything cause there is nothing to find? While space is vast and all one would think that we would have find any indications or evidence of something by now or? Or is that part kept hush-hush-super-secret with all the alien bodies at Area51? That we are all alone in the universe and there is nothing out there to find is apparently never an option.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by oumuamua on Saturday September 24 2022, @02:06PM (2 children)
First of all realize that we only have a chance of detecting life only in our own galaxy while there are billions of other galaxies out there. It is a statistical certainty alien life is out there somewhere. This is proof that we will never be able to travel faster than light. If it was possible to travel faster than light, aliens would already be doing it, and they would have already arrived here.
Second, maybe the aliens ARE taking measures to hide their existence a la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 24 2022, @11:12PM (1 child)
Nice way to show that you don't understand statistics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 25 2022, @10:35PM
Or, is it a nice way to show that you don't know how many stars there are out there?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday September 24 2022, @02:21PM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Saturday September 24 2022, @05:48PM
No steganography required. With the sensitivity with which we've searched the sky so far, we wouldn't realistically be able to detect a civilization as radio-noisy as ourselves around even the nearest star - especially not considering the frankly insane amount of radio-noise coming from the star itself. Not unless they they knew about us and were urgently trying to get our attention. Or we just happened to be directly in line with a high power tight-beam broadcast to someone else.
So, we search the sky with ever greater sensitivity, looking for evidence of any sort of artificial signal from nearby stars, or intentional communication attempts from further ones.
It could be that there is nobody out there to hear - but if we don't look we'll *definitely* never find anything. And we've barely begun the search.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tokolosh on Saturday September 24 2022, @10:54PM
Are we doing background checks on stars now? This is out of control.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 25 2022, @12:34AM
We are
There is... They're alone too [theoatmeal.com]