The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Searching for Technosignatures in Observations of TESS Targets of Interest

Abstract

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 113 30-min cadence observations collected for 28 targets selected from the TESS Input Catalog (TIC) from among those identified as containing signatures of transiting planets. The targets were searched for narrowband signals from 1 -11 GHz using the turboSETI (Enriquez et al. 2017; Enriquez & Price 2019) pipeline architecture modified for compatibility with the Google Cloud environment. Data were searched for drift rates of ±4 Hz / s above a minimum signal-to-noise threshold of 10, following the parameters of previous searches conducted by Price et al. (2020) andEnriquez et al. (2017). 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 4.9 × 10 14 W.

Simulation of the Earth’s radio-leakage from mobile towers as seen from selected nearby stellar systems

“…The goal of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is to discover evidence of intelligent life beyond the Earth by looking for so-called "techno-signatures" (artificially generated signals that are not produced by nature). Unfortunately, all signals detected by SETI radio experiments to date have not been attributable to an intelligent civilisation, other than our own (Enriquez et al 2017;Pinchuk et al 2019;Traas et al 2021;Perez et al 2020;Wlodarczyk-Sroka et al 2020;Price et al 2020;Harp et al 2016;Heller & Pudritz 2016). In principle, SETI surveys need to be sensitive to a wide range of parameter space -this is due to our ignorance regarding some very basic aspects of the signal we are looking for -including the timing of any transmissions, their location on the sky and their central frequency (Wright 2021;Gray 2020).…”