12/24/2023 0 Comments A radio signal from space in 1977![]() The challenge for astronomers on Breakthrough Listen, and others devoted to finding intelligent life in the heavens, is to spot potential “technosignatures” among the relentless babble of radio waves from equipment on Earth, natural cosmic phenomena, and orbiting hardware that circles the planet. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark.” Speaking at the event, Hawking, who saw humanity’s future in the stars, said: “Mankind has a deep need to explore, to learn, to know. The 10-year effort was announced at the Royal Society in London when the late Stephen Hawking called the work “critically important”. Launched in 2015 by Yuri Milner, a science and technology investor based in Silicon Valley, the Breakthrough Listen project eavesdrops on the million stars closest to Earth in the hope of detecting stray or intentional alien broadcasts. The unusual signal, which gained its name after astronomer Jerry Ehman wrote “Wow!” next to the data, unleashed a wave of excitement, though Ehman cautioned about drawing “vast conclusions from half-vast data”.Īn artist’s impression of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the solar system. The “ Wow! signal” was a short-lived narrowband radio signal picked up during a search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or Seti, by the Big Ear Radio Observatory in Ohio in 1977. ![]() “It is the first serious candidate since the ‘Wow! signal’,” they said. ![]() The beam that appears to have come from the direction of Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star 4.2 light years from Earth, has not been spotted since the initial observation, according to an individual in the astronomy community who requested anonymity because the work is ongoing. Scientists are now preparing a paper on the beam, named BLC1, for Breakthrough Listen, the project to search for evidence of life in space, the Guardian understands. The latest “signal” is likely to have a mundane explanation too, but the direction of the narrow beam, around 980MHz, and an apparent shift in its frequency said to be consistent with the movement of a planet have added to the tantalising nature of the finding. In 1972, astronomers at NRAO had a second go, this time using a bigger telescope that collected as much data in a minute as the older one could in 19 years.It is usual for astronomers on the $100m (£70m) Breakthrough Listen project to spot strange blasts of radio waves with the Parkes telescope or the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, but all so far have been attributed to human-made interference or natural sources. He chose the emission frequency of hydrogen because it is the most abundant element in the universe, and hence an obvious signal for any intelligent civilisation trying to get itself noticed by another.Īlthough the stars – Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani – were considered promising candidates, being nearby and sun-like, Project Ozma detected nothing in over 150 hours of observation. Thus began Project Ozma, the first experiment explicitly designed to look for aliens.ĭrake was hoping to detect radio waves sent by an extraterrestrial civilisation. The telescope – based at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in West Virginia – was tuned to a frequency of 1420 megahertz, the wavelength of radiation naturally emitted by hydrogen in space. On 8 April 1960, Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake pointed a 26-metre radio telescope at two nearby stars. Read more: “ Is the answer to life, the universe and everything 37?” First contact ![]() But once in a while there is a flurry of excitement. ![]() The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has been going on for over half a century. Why indeed? It is not as if we haven’t been trying. In 1950, Nobel prizewinning physicist Enrico Fermi posed his famous paradox: if extraterrestrial intelligence exists, why haven’t we found it? (Image: The Ohio State University Radio Observatory and the North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO)) The Wow! signal: detected in 1977, it has never been repeated ![]()
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