The Breakthrough Listen Initiative is undertaking a comprehensive search for radio and optical signatures from extraterrestrial civilizations. An integral component of the project is the design and implementation of widebandwidth data recorder and signal processing systems. The capabilities of these systems, particularly at radio frequencies, directly determine survey speed; further, given a fixed observing time and spectral coverage, they determine sensitivity as well. Here, we detail the Breakthrough Listen wide-bandwidth data recording system deployed at the 100 m aperture Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope. The system digitizes up to 6 GHz of bandwidth at 8 bits for both polarizations, storing the resultant 24 GB s −1 of data to disk. This system is among the highest data rate baseband recording systems in use in radio astronomy. A future system expansion will double recording capacity, to achieve a total Nyquist bandwidth of 12 GHz in two polarizations. In this paper, we present details of the system architecture, along with salient configuration and disk-write optimizations used to achieve high-throughput data capture on commodity compute servers and consumer-class hard disk drives.
Breakthrough Listen is the most comprehensive and sensitive search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) to date, employing a collection of international observational facilities including both radio and optical telescopes. During the first three years of the Listen program, thousands of targets have been observed with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT), Parkes Telescope and Automated Planet Finder. At GBT and Parkes, observations have been performed ranging from 700 MHz to 26 GHz, with raw data volumes averaging over 1 PB / day. A pseudo-real time software spectroscopy suite is used to produce multi-resolution spectrograms amounting to approximately 400 GB h −1 GHz −1 beam −1 . For certain targets, raw baseband voltage data is also preserved. Observations with the Automated Planet Finder produce both 2-dimensional and 1-dimensional high resolution (R ∼ 10 5 ) echelle spectral data.Although the primary purpose of Listen data acquisition is for SETI, a range of secondary science has also been performed with these data, including studies of fast radio bursts. Other current and potential research topics include spectral line studies, searches for certain kinds of dark matter, probes of interstellar scattering, pulsar searches, radio transient searches and investigations of stellar activity. Listen data are also being used in the development of algorithms, including machine learning approaches to modulation scheme classification and outlier detection, that have wide applicability not just for astronomical research but for a broad range of science and engineering.In this paper, we describe the hardware and software pipeline used for collection, reduction, archival, and public dissemination of Listen data. We describe the data formats and tools, and present Breakthrough Listen Data Release 1.0 (BLDR 1.0), a defined set of publicly-available raw and reduced data totalling 1 PB.
Exoplanetary systems are prime targets for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). With the recent uptick in the identification of candidate and confirmed exoplanets through the work of missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), we are beginning to understand that Earth-like planets are common. In this work, we extend the Breakthrough Listen (BL) search for extraterrestrial intelligence to include targeted searches of stars identified by TESS as potential exoplanet hosts. We report on 30 minute cadence observations collected for 28 targets selected from the TESS Input Catalog from among those identified as containing signatures of transiting planets. The targets were searched for narrowband signals from 1 to 11 GHz using the turboSETI pipeline architecture modified for compatibility with the Google Cloud environment. Data were searched for drift rates of ±4 Hz s−1 above a minimum signal-to-noise threshold of 10, following the parameters of previous searches conducted by Price et al. and Enriquez et al. The observations presented in this work establish some of the deepest limits to date over such a wide band (1–11 GHz) for life beyond Earth. We determine that fewer than 12.72% of the observed targets possess transmitters operating at these frequencies with an equivalent isotropic radiated power greater than our derived threshold of .
The aim of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is to find technologically capable life beyond Earth through their technosignatures. On 2019 April 29, the Breakthrough Listen SETI project observed Proxima Centauri with the Parkes ‘Murriyang’ radio telescope. These data contained a narrowband signal with characteristics broadly consistent with a technosignature near 982 MHz (‘blc1’). Here we present a procedure for the analysis of potential technosignatures, in the context of the ubiquity of human-generated radio interference, which we apply to blc1. Using this procedure, we find that blc1 is not an extraterrestrial technosignature, but rather an electronically drifting intermodulation product of local, time-varying interferers aligned with the observing cadence. We find dozens of instances of radio interference with similar morphologies to blc1 at frequencies harmonically related to common clock oscillators. These complex intermodulation products highlight the necessity for detailed follow-up of any signal of interest using a procedure such as the one outlined in this work.
The detection of life beyond Earth is an ongoing scientific pursuit, with profound implications. One approach, known as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), seeks to find engineered signals (‘technosignatures’) that indicate the existence of technologically capable life beyond Earth. Here, we report on the detection of a narrowband signal of interest at ~982 MHz, recorded during observations towards Proxima Centauri with the Parkes Murriyang radio telescope. This signal, BLC1, has characteristics broadly consistent with hypothesized technosignatures and is one of the most compelling candidates to date. Analysis of BLC1—which we ultimately attribute to being an unusual but locally generated form of interference—is provided in a companion paper. Nevertheless, our observations of Proxima Centauri are a particularly sensitive search for radio technosignatures towards a stellar target.
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