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The Andromeda galaxy, a trillion stars, is at the heart of a new student-led project called the Trillion Planet Survey, which aims to detect signs of extraterrestrial life.
Credit: S. Ozime
Ambitious research conducted by students to find intelligent extraterrestrials is underway.
The Trillion Planet Survey began scanning the huge Andromeda galaxy, as well as our own Milky Way, in search of beams of light that could have been produced by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. (The name of the project comes from the fact that Andromeda hosts about 1,000 billion stars, and it is thought that stars in general host at least one planet on average.)
"First of all, we assume that there is a class civilization similar or superior to ours that tries to diffuse its presence with the help of an optical beam, perhaps the "Directed energy" network type being developed here on Earth, "senior researcher Andrew Stewart, a student at Emory University in Atlanta, said in a statement. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]
"Second, we assume that the transmission wavelength of this beam is the one we can detect," Stewart added. "Finally, we assume that this beacon has been left on long enough for us to detect light.If these conditions are met and the power and diameter of the beam of extraterrestrial intelligence match those of a terrestrial class of civilization, our system will detect this signal. "
This system uses an image analysis pipeline and the global network of small robotic telescopes (one meter class) operated by the Las Cumbres Observatory.
Each telescope alone represents a slice of about 3% Andromeda, located about 2.5 million light years from Earth. The team will combine a set of these photos to create a single image, which will then be compared to a blank "control" of the galaxy – a spotless photo, for example, by satellites above his head.
Any difference between the two images could theoretically result from light signals produced by E.T. (of course, there might be natural explanations). These "transients" will be processed by the data pipeline, which will help eliminate false positives, said team members.
"The software checks, for example, a satellite that has crossed our image," said Kyle Friedman, a senior at Granada Hills Charter High School in Los Angeles, in the same release. "It would not be small, it would be very big, and if that happened, the software would recognize it immediately and reject that image even before it was processed."
Stewart, Friedman and their colleagues are part of the research group of cosmologist Philip Lubin, a professor of physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who has extensive experience in space laser.
For example, Lubin is a key player in the $ 100 million Breakthrough Starshot program, which aims to develop a spaceflight system consisting of lasers and tiny spacecraft equipped with sails. These lasers could accelerate the robotic nanoprobes to 20% of the speed of light, said members of the Starshot Breakthrough team, so that devices can reach the exoplanet systems nearby just a few decades after their launch. (By using current rocket technology, such thefts would take at least tens of thousands of years.)
And Lubin had already proposed to look for signs of "directed energy" space flight systems, which E.T. could use.
A still image from a video shows how a set of Earth-based lasers would power a "nanocraft" equipped with sails to a star system remote from the Starshot Breakthrough program. If intelligent aliens have also developed such systems of spaceflight, the researchers claim that the beams they project into space could be detectable.
Credit: Revolutionary Prize Foundation
The Trillion Planet Survey is already observing Andromeda and preparing the pipeline for the project, team members said. The analysis of the images can be completed in a matter of weeks, but similar observations could continue to be made indefinitely, so that researchers can look for signs that they may have missed.
For most of 60 years of searching for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), researchers have searched for radio signals. The new project is an example of a new strategy known as SETI Optics, which, according to members of the Trillion Planet Survey team, should work in concert with the traditional method.
"Under no circumstances do we suggest that SETI radio be abandoned in favor of SETI optics," said Stewart. "We believe that optical tapes should also be explored."
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @ michaeldwall and Google+. follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally posted on Space.com.
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