Scientists have launched a major new search for alien life. The attempt uses the latest techniques to scour the skies in the hope of finding data that could be an indication of extraterrestrial intelligence. They also want to make data from their searches available to the public in the hope that citizen scientists can spot potential evidence in what they have found.
The researchers at the SETI Institute, which is focused on the search for alien life, are searching for what they call ‘technosignatures’, i.e., hints in the data that suggest they could be coming from planets where perhaps are other beings. These could be anything from sniffing hints of chemicals on alien worlds to indications that there could be structures or lasers on other planets.
The aim is to develop a system that can be placed on the Very Large Array (VLA) telescope, based in Mexico, and used to get data to their 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 that is already collecting.
SETI’s Breakthrough Listen Initiative, launched in 2015 to ‘listen’ for signals of alien life, has released nearly two petabytes of data from the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the Milky Way galaxy and the region around its central black hole. Since Breakthrough Listen’s initial data released in 2019, the organisation has doubled what is available to the public.
Scientists see life forms, whether ‘intelligent’ or not, as those that produce certain indicators that they can detect, such as what humans produce, like large amounts of oxygen, smaller amounts of methane, and a variety of other chemicals. So, in addition, scientists are also developing computer models to simulate extraterrestrial environments that can help support future searches for habitable planets and life beyond the solar system.
Studies to detect exoplanetary habitability are conducted by NASA’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory at the University of Washington. Telescopes in space and on the ground may in the future have the capability to observe the atmospheres of Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby cool stars. These computer models would help determine whether an observed planet is more or less likely to support life to understand how best to recognise signs of habitability and life on these planets.