[astro-ph.GA] An operating stellar engine that transfers momentum to its host star could produce an approximately persistent transverse acceleration during the Gaia Data Release 3 (DR3) observing epoch.
We search for such accelerations among 406,984 quality-selected Gaia DR3 stars with nominal distances below 200 pc (about 650 light-years), using 8,890 published Acceleration7 solutions.
Because long-period binaries and astrometric systematics can produce similar sky-plane curvature, we model these conventional explanations together with a broad component that can absorb any remaining persistent acceleration or model mismatch. At a0=2.60×10−4 m s−2, where essentially the entire parent sample is searchable, mapping the residual weights evaluated at the one-sided 95% profile-limit point gives a parent-population fraction limit of 1.21×10−5.
Multiplying this fraction by the parent-sample size gives a summed upper-limit weight of about five star-equivalents above the threshold. Toward the lowest acceleration thresholds, the searchable fraction declines rapidly, so the corresponding bounds primarily describe the reach of the search. No individual source is interpreted as a technological signal.
Bo-Lun Huang, Zhen-Zhao Tao, Tong-Jie Zhang, Zhi-E Liu
Comments: 12 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal
Subjects: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2608.16060 [astro-ph.GA] (or arXiv:2608.16060v1 [astro-ph.GA] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.16060
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Submission history
From: Bolun Huang
[v1] Mon, 17 Aug 2026 03:45:41 UTC (276 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.16060
astrobiology, SETI, technosignature,
