The most ambitious project to date searching for signs of technology as an indicator of extraterrestrial intelligence is partnering with ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, and the University of Manchester, to deploy a new all-sky monitor at the Westerbork Observatory in the Netherlands.
Westerbork Observatory is one of the last remaining radio quiet zones in Europe.
The new experiment takes phased array feeds (PAFs) – essentially wide-field radio cameras – and installs them on the ground, looking up at the sky directly.
Ready to listen up! Details of new effort given during May 13 gathering.
Image credit: Breakthrough Listen
The result: “All Sky, All the Time” and a new radio sky monitor for transients and technosignatures, explains the Breakthrough Listen effort, headquartered at the University of Oxford.
Computing power
Jessica Dempsey, Director of ASTRON, said the new collaboration takes advantage of advances in computing power since they first built PAFs. That advance enables a real-time view of the whole sky in a way that wasn’t possible before.
The new instrument takes advantage of cutting edge processing technology enabled by the latest computer chips. Breakthrough Listen has been partnering with NVIDIA to implement streaming data processing using. NVIDIA is known for its pioneering semiconductor work enabling accelerated computing to pave the way for generative AI.
Search for technosignatures of other starfolk makes use of advanced computing capability.
Image credit: Breakthrough Listen
New capabilities
“Although we’ve not yet detected a confirmed technosignature, Breakthrough Listen has placed some of the strongest constraints to date on the presence of intelligent life beyond Earth,” said Breakthrough Initiatives Executive Director, S. Pete Worden.
“We’ve also developed flexible digital technology,” Worden added, “giving us a new understanding of fast radio bursts, flaring stars, and other unusual astrophysical objects.”
The new partnership provides” impressive new capabilities for our search, and a testbed as we prepare for the next generation of radio telescopes,” Worden said.
Credit: Breakthrough Listen
Survey sweep…stakes!
Breakthrough Listen collaborates with facilities around the globe, including a number of the most powerful radio telescopes, as well as cutting-edge observatories operating in other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
According to the group, it aims to survey one million nearby stars, the entire galactic plane and 100 nearby galaxies.
The Breakthrough Initiatives are funded by the Breakthrough Foundation established by Yuri and Julia Milner.