Scientists working on NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have joined the Breakthrough Listen initiative in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).
Launched in April 2018, TESS is on the hunt for alien planets circling nearby stars. To date, the space telescope has spotted more than 1,000 “objects of interest”—29 of which are confirmed extrasolar planets.
“It’s exciting that the world’s most powerful SETI search, with our partner facilities across the globe, will be collaborating with the TESS team and our most capable planet-hunting machine,” Pete Worden, executive director of the Breakthrough Initiatives, said in a statement.
“We’re looking forward to working together as we try to answer one of the most profound questions about our place in the universe: Are we alone?” he added.
During its initial two-year mission, TESS will observe nearly the entire sky, looking for transit—a phenomenon that occurs when a planet passes in front of its star, causing a dip in the star’s brightness.
Such planets, according to Breakthrough Initiatives, are prime targets for follow-up by NASA programs like the James Webb Space Telescope, set to launch in 2021.
Astrobiologists also search for “technosignatures”—indicators of technology that may have been developed by advanced civilizations—using powerful telescopes to look for signals from transmitters, propulsion devices, or other engineering.
No unambiguous technosignatures have been spotted to date.
“The discovery by the Kepler spacecraft of Boyajian’s Star—an object with wild, and apparently random, variations in its lightcurve—sparked great excitement and a range of possible explanations, of which megastructures were just one,” according to Andrew Siemion, leader of the Breakthrough Listen science team at the University of California, Berkeley’s SETI Research Center.
“Follow-up observations have suggested that dust particles in orbit around the star are responsible for the dimming,” he continued. “But studies of anomalies like this are expanding our knowledge of astrophysics, as well as casting a wider net in the search for technosignatures.”
The new collaboration aims to expand Breakthrough Listen’s target list, refine its analysis strategy, and provide more meaningful statistics in the event of non-detections.
“We are very enthusiastic about joining the Breakthrough Listen SETI search,” TESS Deputy Science Director Sara Seager said. “Out of all the exoplanet endeavors, only SETI holds the promise of identifying signs of intelligent life.”
Observations will take place at Listen’s primary facilities: the Green Bank and Parkes telescopes, MeerKAT, and the Automated Planet Finder.
Additional facilities include VERITAS, NenuFAR, FAST, the Murchison Widefield Array, LOFAR stations in Ireland and Sweden, Jodrell Bank Observatory and e-MERLIN, Keck Observatory, and the Sardinia Radio Telescope, as well as the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope array.
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