The SETI Institute said This week that Very Large Array, National Science Foundation telescope in New Mexicoyou will join the hunt of radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.
These signals would be technical fingerprints, so called because they are radio waves that can only be produced by artificial transmitters. SETI, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has long focused on radio searches. some unusual Radio signals from deep spaceLikes pulsarsHe was Suspected at first to be strange in nature.
the Karl Jansky very large array (VLA), named after The engineer who detected radio waves coming from outer space in 1931, it began operating in 1980 and is operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. It consists of 27 radio dishes, each 82 feet wide. The telescope has monitored such massive events Ancient galactic explosions But also find out Strange radio signals from deep space, whose origins remain a mystery. The latter will become the focus of the VLA, as will the Hun telescopees in radio emissions that can be aassociated with artificial sources. In other words, the potential Alien data.
The matrix could shed more light on streams whose origins are not yet fully understood. FOr, for example, in 2021, A.J A spiral radio burst emanating from near the center of the Milky Way It was briefly detected, but astronomers don’t know what produced it.
“The VLA is the instrument that radio astronomers use, but this is the first time we’ve used it in a large-scale, ongoing search for technical fingerprints,” said Andrew Simeon, Bernard Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute. in release of the institute.
The VLA’s normal (extensive) search for radio sources in the night sky will continue, but a copy of the data it collects in these efforts will be passed to a receiver that collects a specific channel of radio waves—the channel associated with the artificial radio waves. The system is called the Open Source Multimodal Interferometer Suite (you could just call it COSMIC.)
Paul Demorest, researcher and group leader at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, said in a statement launch. “This is an ideal and very efficient way to get large amounts of telescope time searching for rare signals.”
radio signals from about 10 One million star systems will be studied using the new processing system, according to the SETI Institutewhich stated that the system will make the search in the VLA 1000 times more extensive than previous searches for extraterrestrial intelligence.
The system was tested against radio signals from the Voyager 1 spacecraft, the farthest man-made object from Earth. in About 14.8 billion miles. Because Voyager 1 is the farthest Certain In a technical signature, it has demonstrated the system’s ability to identify synthetic signals.
It is hoped that throwing the power of the VLA behind SETI research will increase the number of interesting radio signals that astronomers can interrogate, and perhaps clarify the nature of past radio bursts whose origins remained unknown.
The successor to the VLA – the Next-generation ultra-large matrix– It will provide greater sensitivity and accuracy. ngVLA is set to start scientific observations in 2029 and will be fully operational by 2035.
The answers are out there, hopefully adding COSMIC to the VLA toolbox closer to astronomers.
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