Astronomers have begun a first-of-its-kind search for signs of “technosignatures” produced by super civilizations—those more advanced than ours—in galaxies beyond the Milky Way.
Technosignatures are evidence of past or present technology that would, if found, indirectly confirm the presence of life in another star system. Technosignatures could include city lights, solar panels, megastructures and swarms of satellites.
Although there have been similar searches for technosignatures before, this is the first extragalactic search. The radio telescope array in Australia being used is capable of looking for signs of life in star systems both in our Milky Way galaxy and in 2,800 galaxies beyond.
Wide Search
The project, a partnership between the SETI Institute, the Berkeley SETI Research Center and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, will use the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) of 4,096 radio telescope antennas in 256 grids in the outback of Western Australia.
This is not the first time the MWA has been used to look for aliens. In 2020, it was used to conduct the deepest, broadest search for alien technologies ever conducted. That project scanned a patch of sky around the constellation of Vela, an area of the night sky with at least 10 million stars within the Milky Way galaxy. It was studied for 17 hours using low frequencies, but no trace of intelligent life was found.
Massive Expansion
This new study constitutes a massive expansion. It’s largely thanks to MWA’s new ability to focus on low radio frequencies of 100 MHz. “This work represents a significant step forward in our efforts to detect signals from advanced extraterrestrial civilizations,” said Dr. Chenoa Tremblay at the SETI Institute and director of the MWA. “The large field of view and low-frequency range of the MWA makes it an ideal tool for this kind of research, and the limits we set will guide future studies.”
It’s essential to keep searching for signs of life at different radio frequencies, she added.
Easier To Detect
SETI—the search for extraterrestrial intelligence—will almost certainly be a very long-term project. Technosignatures of advanced alien technologies are thought to be potentially easier to detect than “biosignatures”—direct evidence of microbial life.
Detecting radio waves emitted by technosignatures is a form of radio astronomy. The radio signals collected by the MWR will have traveled billions of light years to reach Earth.
Billions Of Stars
The MWA will soon form part of the upcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the world’s largest radio telescope. A $2.1 billion observatory with a second site in South Africa will use a million low-frequency antennas and be 50 times more sensitive than the MWA.
The SKA may be capable of detecting Earth-like radio signals from nearby exoplanets (planets that orbit a star other than our sun) and surveying billions of star systems for technosignatures.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
