COSMIC: An Ethernet-based Commensal, Multimode Digital Backend on the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Abstract

The primary goal of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is to gain an understanding of the prevalence of technologically advanced beings (organic or inorganic) in the Galaxy. One way to approach this is to look for technosignatures: remotely detectable indicators of technology, such as temporal or spectral electromagnetic emissions consistent with an artificial source. With the new Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster (COSMIC) digital backend on the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), we aim to conduct a search for technosignatures that is significantly more comprehensive, sensitive, and efficient than previously attempted. The COSMIC system is currently operational on the VLA, recording data and designed with the flexibility to provide user-requested modes. This paper describes the hardware system design, the current software pipeline, and plans for future development.

Artificial Greenhouse Gases as Exoplanet Technosignatures

“…The near future potential for characterizing terrestrial exoplanetary atmospheres and surfaces in search of remote biosignatures has opened up the possibility for commensal searches for planetary technosignatures with no added cost (Lingam & Loeb 2019). Commensal search programs are already common within SETI, especially when conducting radio-based observations, e.g., SERENDIP (Bowyer et al 1988;Sullivan et al 1997), Allen Telescope Array (DeBoer 2006), MeerKAT (Czech et al 2021), and COSMIC (Tremblay et al 2024). In a similar vein to the search for biosignatures, planetary technosignatures (technosignatures limited to the planetary scale, excluding, e.g., stellar megastructures) are functionally a search for "technospheres," where the impact of technology has detectably risen above the nontechnological (abiotic and biotic) background level of the planetary environment (Frank et al 2017;Haqq-Misra et al 2020).…”