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martyb [soylentnews.org] writes:

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 [nrao.edu]. 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.

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Siemion highlighted the singular role the $100-million Breakthrough Listen Initiative has played in reinvigorating the field of SETI in recent years. Siemion also announced the latest scientific results from Listen, a SETI survey in the direction of stars where a distant civilization could observe the Earth's passage across the sun, and the availability of nearly 2 PetaBytes of data from the Listen Initiative's international network of observatories.

Other indicators of possible technologies include laser beams, structures built around stars to capture the star's power output, atmospheric chemicals produced by industries, and rings of satellites similar to the ring of geosynchronous communication satellites orbiting above Earth's equator.

Additional reading: History of the SETI Institute [seti.org], The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in Earth's Solar Transit Zone [arxiv.org], The Detectability and Characterization of the TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanet Atmospheres with JWST [arxiv.org] (James Webb Space Telescope [nasa.gov]), and Scientists Detail the Next Era in the Search for Extraterrestrial Life [aaas.org] and

Previously:
Breakthrough Listen Turns Up Nothing Around 1,327 Nearby Stars, Releases 1 PB of Data [soylentnews.org]
SETI: Not Successful Because We Are Barely Even Looking? [soylentnews.org]
SETI Spots Dozens of New Mysterious Signals Emanating From Distant Galaxy [soylentnews.org]
Breakthrough Listen Expands CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope Survey to Encompass Millions of Stars [soylentnews.org]
Receiving Messages from Aliens Could Pose a Security Risk [soylentnews.org]
GPU Cryptomining Hurting SETI and Other Astronomy Projects [soylentnews.org]
Breakthrough Listen to Observe Interstellar Asteroid 'Oumuamua for Radio Emissions [soylentnews.org]
A New Theory on Why We Haven’t Found Aliens Yet [soylentnews.org]
Preliminary Results of Breakthrough Listen Project Released [soylentnews.org]
Former SETI Human Wants to Send Messages to Proxima Centauri b [soylentnews.org]
Are We Looking for Aliens in all the Wrong Ways? [soylentnews.org]
"Breakthrough Listen" to Search for Alien Radio Transmissions Near Tabby's Star [soylentnews.org]
SETI Is Investigating a Possible Extraterrestrial Signal From Deep Space [soylentnews.org]
Are We Alone in the Universe? [soylentnews.org]

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