Analysis of the Breakthrough Listen signal of interest blc1 with a technosignature verification framework

Sheikh, Sofia; Smith, Sandy; Price, Danny C.; DeBoer, David R.; Lacki, Brian C.; Czech, Daniel; Croft, Steve; Gajjar, Vishal; Isaacson, Howard; Lebofsky, Matthew; MacMahon, David H. E.; Ng, Cherry; Perez, Karen I.; Siemion, Andrew; Webb, Claire; Zic, Andrew; Drew, Jamie; Worden, Simon P.

doi:10.1038/s41550-021-01508-8

Cited by 34 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Smith et al (2021) described the BL search for radio technosignatures from the direction of Proxima Centauri using the Parkes Murriyang radio telescope and the detection of blc1. Its companion paper, Sheikh et al (2021a), presented the analysis of the technosignature candidate, which determined that the signal was not extraterrestrial, and instead produced by Earth-based electronics. Follow-up observations of Proxima Centauri by Sheikh et al (2021b) found no repeats of blc1 or any other signals of interest near the same wavelength.…”

Section: Results From Searches (15 Papers)mentioning

confidence: 99%

SETI in 2021

Huston,

Wright

2022

Preprint

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In this second installment of SETI in 20xx, we very briefly and subjectively review developments in SETI in 2021. Our primary focus is 93 papers and books published or made public in 2021, which we sort into six broad categories: results from actual searches, new search methods and instrumentation, target and frequency selection, the development of technosignatures, theory of ETIs, and social aspects of SETI.

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Section: Results From Searches (15 Papers)mentioning

confidence: 99%

SETI in 2021

Huston,

Wright

2022

Preprint

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“…More broadly, our likelihood emulation approach provides an example of dealing with sparse, irregular observations to conduct inference of SETI signals of interest. Indeed this approach could be readily applied to other technosignature data sets, such as the Breakthrough Listen radio search (Price et al 2020;Sheikh et al 2021) or even non-radio searches such as in the optical (e.g. see Maire et al 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Could the "Wow" signal have originated from a stochastic repeating beacon?

Kipping,

Gray

2022

Preprint

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The famous "Wow" signal detected in 1977 remains arguably the most compelling SETI signal ever found. The original Big Ear data requires that the signal turned on/off over the span of ∼3 minutes (time difference between the dual antennae), yet persisted for 72 seconds (duration of a single beam sweep). Combined with the substantial and negative follow-up efforts, these observations limit the allowed range of signal repeat schedules, to the extent that one might question the credibility of the signal itself. Previous work has largely excluded the hypothesis of a strictly periodic repeating source, for periods shorter than 40 hours. However, a non-periodic, stochastic repeater remains largely unexplored. Here, we employ a likelihood emulator using the Big Ear observing logs to infer the probable signal properties under this hypothesis. We find that the maximum a-posteriori solution has a likelihood of 32.3%, highly compatible with the Big Ear data, with a broad 2 σ credible interval of signal duration 72 secs< T < 77 mins and mean repeat rate 0.043 days −1 < λ < 59.8 days −1 . We extend our analysis to include 192 hours of subsequent observations from META, Hobart and ATA, which drops the peak likelihood to 1.78%, and thus in tension with the available data at the 2.4 σ level. Accordingly, the Wow signal cannot be excluded as a stochastic repeater with available data, and we estimate that 62 days of accumulated additional observations would be necessary to surpass 3 σ confidence.

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“…Previous targeted SETI studies have accumulated rich experience in identifying candidate signals and established a systematic methodology. Aiming to compare our approach to the former ones and complement the signal identification methodology, we performed a comprehensive examination on NBS 210629 following the technosignature verification framework summarized by Sheikh et al (2021).…”

Section: Complements To Technosignature Verification Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…6. Corresponding to the steps 6-9 in Sheikh et al (2021), we search our data for RFI signals with similar characteristics to NBS 210629, which may have the same origin with the event. Because a signal may be transmitted at several different frequencies simultaneously, and the frequency of a signal may always be constant, our search is carried out in two directions: (1) RFI with the same frequency-normalized drift rate ν/ν in the same observation;…”

Section: Complements To Technosignature Verification Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitive Multi-beam Targeted SETI Observations towards 33 Exoplanet Systems with FAST

Tao¹,

Zhao²,

Zhang³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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As a major approach to looking for life beyond the Earth, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is committed to searching for technosignatures such as engineered radio signals that are indicative of technologically capable life. In this paper, we report a targeted SETI campaign employing an observation strategy named multi-beam coincidence matching (MBCM) at the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) towards 33 known exoplanet systems, searching for ETI narrow-band drifting signals across 1.05−1.45 GHz in two orthogonal linear polarization directions separately. A signal at 1140.604 MHz detected from the observation towards Kepler-438 originally piqued our interest because its features are roughly consistent with assumed ETI technosignatures. However, evidences such as its polarization characteristics are able to eliminae the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin. Our observations achieve an unprecedented sensitivity since the minimum equivalent isotropic radiated power (EIRP) we are able to detect reaches 1.48 × 10 9 W.

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Analysis of the Breakthrough Listen signal of interest blc1 with a technosignature verification framework

Cited by 34 publications

References 17 publications

SETI in 2021

SETI in 2021

Could the "Wow" signal have originated from a stochastic repeating beacon?

Sensitive Multi-beam Targeted SETI Observations towards 33 Exoplanet Systems with FAST

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