A Radio Technosignature Search Towards Proxima Centauri Resulting In A Signal-of-interest
The detection of life beyond Earth is an ongoing scientific endeavour, with profound implications. One approach, known as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), seeks to find engineered signals (`technosignatures’) that indicate the existence technologically-capable life beyond Earth.
Here, we report on the detection of a narrowband signal-of-interest at ~982 MHz, recorded during observations toward 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 (Sheikh et al., 2021). Nevertheless, our observations of Proxima Centauri are the most sensitive search for radio technosignatures ever undertaken on a star target.
Shane Smith, Danny C Price, Sofia Z Sheikh, Daniel J Czech, Steve Croft, David DeBoer, Vishal Gajjar, Howard Isaacson, Brian C Lacki, Matt Lebofsky, David HE MacMahon, Cherry Ng, Karen I Perez, Andrew PV Siemion, Claire Isabel Webb, Jamie Drew, S Pete Worden, Andrew Zic
Comments: 14 pages, 4 figures (+3 supplementary figures). Published open-access in Nature Astronomy
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Popular Physics (physics.pop-ph)
Journal reference: Nature Astronomy, vol 5, pgs 1148-1152 (2021)
DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01479-w
Cite as: arXiv:2111.08007 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2111.08007v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
Submission history
From: Danny Price
[v1] Mon, 15 Nov 2021 08:41:42 UTC (2,791 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.08007
Astrobiology, SETI,
