As part of the Breakthrough Listen project, the privately funded SETI research project has spent years studying 100 galaxies closest to Earth and the center of the Milky Way for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence (aliens). Now they want to look for them in distant galaxies.
As the California-based SETI Institute, the Berkeley SETI Research Center and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research report, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA for short), a radio telescope system in Western Australia, is being used that consists of a large number of very simple, inexpensive antennas.
Search for super civilizations
Led by Chenoa Tremblay of the SETI Institute and Steven Tingay of Curtin University, the MWA aims to search for low-frequency signals around 100 MHz (megahertz) in distant galaxies. This new approach is concerned with the search for so-called supercivilizations – those that are more advanced than our own, it is said.
To broadcast a signal from another galaxy, such a supercivilization would need to have technology powerful enough to harness the energy of the sun or multiple stars in the galaxy, scientists say.
“While previous SETI searches have been largely limited to our own Milky Way, this new approach opens the door to distant galaxies and possible supercivilizations that could possess advanced technologies,” according to a SETI Institute press release.
Radio telescope to be deployed in the outback
The researchers want to use the MWA’s large field of view, which extends over a large area of the Australian outback. According to the scientists, this makes it possible to record around 2,800 galaxies in a single observation.
SETI stands for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Since 1960, several scientific projects have been conducted to search for possible signs and signals of technological civilizations in space.
Source: Krone
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