Dan Wartimer has been trying to eavesdrop on aliens for over 40 years.
A pioneering researcher in the field of astronomy known as SETI, orSearch for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Welthimer's work is to explore the universe with a giant terrestrial radio telescope. Scanned and unexplained signals that may have originated from strange or alien civilizations.
If it sounds like you're looking for a needle in a haystack, it's for some reason.
However, the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life has become more complicated in recent years. The growing demand for mobile services and the wireless Internet is causing interference that can congest the wireless spectrum, distort data, and add "noise" to scientific results.
"The Earth is becoming more and more polluted," said Welthimer, Chief Technology Officer of the Berkeley SETI Research Center. “In some wireless bands, TV transmitters, Wi-Fi, and mobile phones are so high in bandwidth that it is already impossible to run SETI.”
Wireless technology continues to grow. Over time, the problem only gets worse, Werthimer said, potentially jeopardizing one of the key ways scientists have to explore intelligent life in space.
Werthimer was one of the authors of apreprint study recently led by a Chinese researcher, andseveral media outlets have the characteristics of an alien civilization. Identified a radio signal that was falsely reported as being present. The signal turned out to be radio interference, Werthimer said.
Focused SETI research began in earnest in the 1980s and became popular culture in Carl Sagan's 1985 novel "Contact," which was later adopted in a movie starring Jodie Foster. ..
SETI's research is essentially aimed at answering the question, "Are we alone in space?" Decades after scientists first began listening to alien signals, improvements in telescope technology and data processing enhanced search, Welthimer said.
"I used to listen to one channel, but now I'm listening to 10 billion channels," he said. “Technology and science continue to advance.”
But these leap in technology present challenges. More satellites are being launched into low earth orbit as a result of lower launch costs and cheaper materials for building spacecraftSocial to wireless internet and GPS navigation Increasing dependence also means intensifying competition for radio frequencies.
"It's a valuable spectrum and people want it more and more for their daily activities," said SETI, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Electrical Engineering at Harvard University. Researcher Paul Horowitz said. "That means that the radio spectrum is confusing these days."
For SETI scientists, having a relatively clear and unobstructed channel for scanning the universe is invaluable. is. False human interference not only increases the work that researchers exclude, but can also appear as falsely intriguing signals.
Astronomers are too familiar with the challenge, Andrew Shee, director of the SETI Institute's Berkeley SETI Research Center in Mountain View, California and Chairman of the SETI Research Committee at Bernard M. Oliver. Mion says.
Scientists often rely on reproducibility to avoid red herring. This may include long-term study of the same target to compare observations. Researchers also use what is known about human-induced interference to screen results.
"As all these satellites are launched, we have more knowledge about what's in space," said Simion, a senior researcher at Breakthrough Listen. I am. A 10-year, $ 100 million initiative to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life, launched in 2015 by Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.
He added that increased situational awareness in space makes it easier to identify satellite and other forms of human interference.
"By looking at the signal from the satellite and thinking that it is from a distant celestial body, it helps us to know that we are not fooling ourselves," Simion said. Told.
Advances in machine learning have made it faster and easier for scientists to filter out interference from their data, said Bruce Betts, chief scientist at the Planetary Society.
Betts said improvements in these treatments should allow SETI research to continue.
"Even if there are more sources of interference, they will follow a particular frequency pattern and a particular timing pattern," he said. “It's really annoying to add hundreds of satellites that all generate the same interference, but we can develop a system to eliminate it.”
SETI As the field of research evolves, in the future There are other ideas on how to avoid interference. For example, Werthimer, Horowitz and others are investigating how to search for alien civilizations in the optical part of the spectrum.
Others have suggested installing a radio telescope on the far side of the moon. There you will be protected from interference from the earth. While technically feasible, Horowitz says such a project can be quite costly.
"SETI has struggled with little government support for decades, so no one would want to do it during financially constrained times," he said. Added.
Despite technical and financial challenges, according to Betts, interest in SETI research has grown over time. He said many of them could be due to the intriguing potential of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
"More than most other discoveries, it will reconstruct many of our philosophical views of the universe," he said. "Yes, it's a needle in a haystack, but if you find it, you'll find one of the deepest discoveries in history."
