The researchers are using a new set of radio telescopes deep in the Australian desert that will listen to radio waves at low frequencies and have high sensitivity. Even if we don't find life, let alone intelligent life, we can learn a lot more conventional things about the properties of other solar systems.
How would you feel if after many decades of searching we finally found signs of intelligent life outside of Earth?
Would you be filled with wonder and excitement, or would the thought of making contact with an unknown life force somewhere in the universe fill you with apprehension and fear?
And what will be the effect of this discovery on us in common - will it unite us or divide us here on earth?
"Perhaps the search for extraterrestrials actually teaches us more about ourselves than anything else," says the astronomer and Deputy Director General of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research, Professor Steven Tingay, who thinks about this and other weighty existential questions as part of his research.
Tingay and his colleague from CSIRO (Australia's National Science Agency) Dr. Chenois Tremblay are engaged in the most in-depth and extensive research to date on signs of extraterrestrial life, thanks to the capabilities offered by the Murchinson Wide Field Array (MWA) - the radio telescope with Low frequencies, high sensitivity and an excellent wide field of view that supports a collection of new scientific ventures from its quiet place in the interior of Western Australia.
So far, there have been no signs that we are not alone. But now that MWA allows for much more extensive searches along with other astrophysical investigations, the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life – known as SETI – is definitely picking up a gear.
For example, it will no doubt add to the new questions about our cosmic uniqueness raised by NASA's latest mission to Mars, where the Perspirans rover is collecting rock and soil samples to search for signs of ancient microbial life.
In 2018, the MWA was used to scan a portion of the Mefres constellation, which is known to include at least 10 million star systems. Within this field are six known extrasolar planets: planets that orbit other stars, like Earth orbits the Sun, that could potentially allow the right conditions for life. In this survey and two previous ones, Tingay and Tremblay examined 75 known extrasolar planets, looking for narrowband signals that correspond to radio transmissions from intelligent civilizations, and another 145 planets were examined in a study to be published soon.
Fortunately, MWA allows SETI to hitch a ride on science that's already underway—offering, as Tingay describes it, "two pieces of science for the price of one." As part of her doctoral research, Chenois used a radio telescope to observe molecular signatures from stars, gas and dust in our galaxy in hopes of discovering the complex molecules that are the origin of life. So the two realized that this data could be used simultaneously in research to find radio signals from advanced civilizations.
"It's a path with little effort and a very high return at this stage, and if you succeed it didn't cost much along the way," explains Tingai. "So it's an almost perfect scenario for science."
Asked to sum up his reaction if this new frontier of astronomy confirms signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life soon, Tingay quickly replies: "I'll rush to the telescope to get more data!"
To the Telescope Partnership website MWA
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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To me this search always seems meaningless, see the Fermi Paradox entry
To an outside observer, the one who is not in the small details, it seems that for decades the same article has been repeating itself over and over again: we built a huge telescope... we are looking for signs of extraterrestrial life... radio waves and that
It is strange that they are willing to go as far outside the galaxy to find intelligent life - when there is a search area that is much closer and more than guarantees positive results - the Middle East. And in general, what is so special about intelligent life when it is possible to establish a government without creatures of this rare type? And yet there is a novelty in the news: so far the Overseas News section in Australia has been limited to a comprehensive overview of the height of the waves on the wonderful surfing beaches of the opposite continent.
At the time more than 10 years ago I was running their collaborative radio signal detection software on my personal computer
There was something exciting about the idea that you could discover intelligent life on a personal computer and the graphics were something you could stare at and think you might be seeing a signal from some intelligent being 🙂
When I started delving into their website, I realized that at least in terms of the level of sensitivity, they would not even be able to pick up a radio aura similar to what is emitted from the Earth, even from Alpha Centauri, which is a little more than 4 light years away, the best is a focused transmission in the direction of the Earth, like a radio telescope that used to be in Porto, retrieving such a signal It would have been possible to discover from 1000 light years, of course the question arises as to why any culture would transmit a direct radio signal to the direction of the earth hundreds of years ago when there was wireless silence here, the radio signals that announced our existence only started to spread about 100 years ago,
I think that nowadays the improved level of sensitivity will probably allow detection at longer ranges assuming that they continue to transmit radio signals,
Regarding biological presence, from analyzing in different ways the light of the sun that radiates on the earth, it is possible that if there is another intelligent civilization that is even a bit more advanced than us in our galaxy, it will be able to diagnose that there is life here
An incredible wealth of intelligent life is right under our noses on Earth.
For example: cows, chickens, horses, donkeys, camels, pigs.
But what do we do with this intelligent life? Animals with consciousness, emotions (who claims that an animal has no emotion
just choose to close your eyes and ignore).
Humanity chose to call them animals, beasts of burden, poultry, domestic animals, livestock, ....
Humanity chose to build them crowded pens and call these pens by endearing names: chicken coop, barn, stable, pigsty.
Humanity enslaves these intelligent animals who live their entire lives in a worse condition than the wounded slave
most. At least once they got a living space on a farm. Today they are kept in narrow cells (see for example battery cages in Israel).
Various organizations advise not to eat meat, but this is a distraction! Most of humanity will continue to eat meat but the problem is
It is not when the animal ends its life, it is a very short suffering. The problem is the suffering he goes through all his life.
Just some examples:
1. Laying hens are kept in battery cages in Israel. For about two years, six chickens are crammed into a cage that is too small to hold one hen. They can't even stretch their wings and step on each other to get some space.
2. Horses are kept in a small stable (small paddock) and even tied for many hours with a very short leash.
A product for a horse to walk or run only on command and on the condition that it carries people or cargo on its back.
3. Cows are milked in a barn (small pen) in high density, forcibly separated from the calf immediately after its birth, milked endlessly
After the calf is born, genetic changes are made so that they can be milked more and more (Israel is proud of this).
4. Cruel abuse of horses, donkeys, camels especially in the Arab sector such as tying the mouth and feet with a metal wire that cuts
their meat. Camels are tied by the legs in a sitting position for many hours so that they learn and do not dare to get up from a sitting position and wait
for tourists to ride them.
Statement: I am not affiliated with any organization, just observing and seeing how much injustice we and our ancestors do to these living creatures
that unfortunately they are less intelligent than us. It is not far from abusing a 3-year-old child just because his intellectual level is low.
Eli Isaac is a private teacher of computer science at an academic level
An outstanding lecturer in the academy and a senior software engineer with a master's degree in computer science
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