National Radio Astronomy Observatory

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Gets an Upgrade

April 27, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Payal Dhar April 17, 2020 (spectrum.ieee.org)

• For over two decades, the SETI@home project harnessed the surplus computing power of over 1.8 million computers around the globe to analyze data collected by radio telescopes for narrow-band radio signals from space that could indicate the existence of extraterrestrial technology. SETI@home volunteers returned about 15 terabytes of data to analyze. On March 31st, SETI@home stopped posting new data for volunteers’ computers to process.

• SETI astronomer and project director of the SETI@home project, Eric Korpela, says that this isn’t the end of the road for the SETI project. The next phase of the project, says Korpela, is “to sift through the billions of potential extraterrestrial signals that our volunteers have found and find any that show signs of really being extraterrestrial,” and not just a human-made signal.

• So what indicates an extraterrestrial signal? “Nearby signals, from an (Earth-based) radar system for example, typically are seen at many positions on the sky,” says Korpela. But if we “come back and look at the same spot a month later and it’s still there, then maybe we have something.” “[I]f we think we’ve got something, we check to see if the same signal ever came from somewhere else.”

• Meanwhile, the SETI Institute is collaborating with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory to employ the world’s most versatile radio telescope, the Very Large Array of 27 dishes, to enable a SETI survey that will be far more powerful than any previous searches. The institute is developing a new interface called COSMIC (Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster) that will access raw data from each antenna and route it through signal processing software to search for extraterrestrial technosignatures in real-time. ‘COSMIC SETI’ will process in excess of 300 GB/second of data.

• Notwithstanding SETI’s utter failure to find any sign of extraterrestrial intelligence in our galaxy, Korpela says, “[I]t’s very unlikely that we are alone.” “They (extraterrestrial beings) aren’t right next door, but they may be within a thousand light years or so.”

• [Editor’s Note] “They aren’t right next door, but they may be within a thousand light years or so.” This is what SETI wants you to think. The truth is that they are next door. Extraterrestrial beings are everywhere: throughout the galaxy and universe, on Earth-based secret space program bases and colonies throughout our solar system, in underground military/deep state facilities, and walking unnoticed in our cities. There are even non-human beings’ civilizations that exist within vast caverns deep under the Earth’s surface.

SETI is a deep state disinformation asset that is wasting an incredible amount of money and scientific resources only to make people believe that smart people are trying their best to locate intelligent extraterrestrial life in our galaxy, but so far they have found none at all. One day soon, hopefully, SETI will be held accountable for perpetuating this deep state lie for the past sixty years.

We’ve all wondered at one point or another if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. “I think it’s very unlikely that we are alone,” says Eric Korpela, an astronomer at the University of California Berkeley’s Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Research Center. “They aren’t right next door, but they may be within a thousand light years or so.”

Korpela is project director of the SETI@home project. For more than two decades, that project harnessed the surplus computing power of over 1.8

million computers around the globe to analyze data collected by radio telescopes for narrow-band radio signals from space that could indicate the existence of extraterrestrial technology. On 31 March 2020, SETI@home stopped putting new data in the queue for volunteers’ computers to process, but it’s not the end of the road for the project.

Now begins the group’s next phase. “We need to sift through the billions of potential extraterrestrial signals that our volunteers have found and find any that show signs of really being extraterrestrial,” says Korpela. That task is difficult, he adds, because humans “make lots of signals that look like what we would expect to see from E.T.”

The primary indicator that his team uses to determine whether a signal might be extraterrestrial is whether that signal remains stable in the sky. “So if we look at a spot in the sky and see a signal, and then come back and look at the same spot a month later and it’s still there, then maybe we have something,” he says. In addition, he notes: “Nearby signals, from a radar system, for example, typically are seen at many positions on the sky, so if we think we’ve got something, we check to see if the same signal ever came from somewhere else.” SETI@home volunteers have returned about 15 TB of data to analyze, Korpela reports.

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A 21-year Search for Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life Has Ended Without Finding Any Aliens

March 13, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Jasper Hamill March 4, 2020 (metro.co.uk)

• For 21 years, the University of California, Berkeley, has run a project called SETI@Home which allowed ordinary people to use their computer’s processing power to help scan deep space in search of alien civilizations. Now this ambitious crowdsourced effort has been closed down as the scientists have analyzed all of the data they need for now, and it’s reached ‘the point of diminishing returns’. “We’re extremely grateful to all of our volunteers for supporting us in many ways during the past 20 years.”

• On Twitter, UC Berkeley’s SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) department wrote: “Thanks to the many volunteers who have helped crunch data for SETI@home in the last two decades.” As of March 31st, the project will stop sending out new work to users. But “Stay tuned…. We have some exciting new ways for the public to contribute to SETI@Berkeley that we will announce in the near future.”

• Earlier this year, scientists at the SETI Institute announced that they are developing state-of-the-art techniques to detect ‘technosignatures’ in space which indicate the presence of alien civilizations. These are ‘detectable indicators’ such as large amounts of oxygen, smaller amounts of methane, and a variety of other chemicals. They plan to develop a system that will ‘piggyback’ on the Very Large Array (VLA) telescope based in New Mexico.

• Dr Tony Beasley, director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) telescope based in Virginia, US, said, “Determining whether we are alone in the universe – as technologically capable life – is among the most compelling questions in science.” “[T]his new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we’re already collecting.”

• Victoria Meadows, principal investigator for Nasa’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory at the University of Washington, which studies to detect exoplanetary habitability, said, “Upcoming telescopes in space and on the ground will have the capability to observe the atmospheres of Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby cool stars, so it’s important to understand how best to recognize signs of habitability and life on these planets.” “These computer models will help us determine whether an observed planet is more or less likely to support life.”

• SETI’s ‘Breakthrough Listen Initiative’, which launched in 2015 to ‘listen’ for signals of alien life, has released the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the Milky Way galaxy and the central black hole. The Initiative is now inviting the public to search the data, gathered from various telescopes around the world, to look for signals from intelligent civilizations.

• [Editor’s Note] SETI’s ongoing “search” for extraterrestrial intelligence reminds me of Macbeth’s soliloquy: “a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” When the truth is finally revealed that our leaders have been aware of the presence of extraterrestrial beings and alien civilizations for decades, SETI will slink away and hope that the public forgets that it spent millions of dollars trying NOT to find alien life, to support the deep state in hiding the truth.

Volunteers have spent the past two decades helping scientists to search for alien civilisations.

Now this ambitious crowdsourced effort has ended – but we’re still no closer to finding extraterrestrial life.

For 21 years, the University of California, Berkeley, has run a project called SETI@Home which allowed ordinary people to use their computer’s processing power to help scan deep space in search of aliens.

But this project has now been closed down without managing to answer the question of the universe is teeming with life or depressingly barren.

On Twitter, UC Berkeley’s SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) department wrote: ‘Thanks to the many volunteers who have helped crunch data for SETI@home in the last two decades.

‘On March 31, the project will stop sending out new work to users, but this is not the end of public engagement in SETI research.

‘Stay tuned…. We have some exciting new ways for the public to contribute to SETI@Berkeley that we will announce in the near future.’

The project was shut down because it had reached ‘the point of diminishing returns’.

‘Basically, we’ve analyzed all the data we need for now,’ scientists wrote.

‘We’re extremely grateful to all of our volunteers for supporting us in many ways during the past 20 years.

‘Without you, there would be no SETI@home. We’re excited to finish up our original science project, and we look forward to what comes next.’

Earlier this year scientists at the SETI Institute, an organisation dedicated to finding extraterrestrial life, said they are developing state-of-the-art techniques to detect ‘technosignatures’ in space which indicate the presence of alien civilisations.

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The ‘Very Large Array’ in NM Will Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Life

February 26, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Georgina Torbet February 15, 2020 (digitaltrends.com)

• A collaboration between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the SETI Institute will use the NRAO’s “Very Large Array” (VLA) of radio telescopes (with operations center in Socorro, New Mexico) to search for the presence of extraterrestrial life in the universe by such indicators as laser beams, structures built around stars, constructed satellites, or atmospheric chemicals produced by industry.

• In a statement, Andrew Siemion, Chair of the SETI Institute and Principal Investigator for the Breakthrough Listen Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley, said “The SETI Institute will develop and install an interface on the VLA permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky. This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search.”

• NRAO Director Tony Beasley stated, “As the VLA conducts standard observations, this new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we’re already collecting.” “Determining whether we are alone in the universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and NRAO telescopes can play a major role in answering it.”

• Bill Diamond, President and CEO of the SETI Institute said that “Having access to the most sensitive radio telescope in the northern hemisphere for SETI observations is perhaps the most transformative opportunity yet in the history of SETI programs,” giving SETI researchers the opportunity to search further than ever before. “We are delighted to have this opportunity to partner with NRAO, especially as we now understand the candidate pool of relevant planets numbers in the billions.”

• [Editor’s Note] Well this should be a huge waste of time and money for a few more years as SETI continues to search the skies in bad faith, desperately trying not to actually find any sign life in the universe, which is its true deep state objective. For if SETI ever admitted that there are signs of an extraterrestrial presence all around us, and has been for decades if not millennia, then they would be exposed as the frauds they are and find themselves out of a job.

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is getting a boost through a collaboration that will use existing

radio telescopes to search for indicators of life elsewhere in the universe.

A new collaboration has been announced between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the SETI Institute, to add SETI capabilities to the NRAO’s radio telescopes. To begin the project, an interface will be added to the NRAO’s Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico to search for events or structures which could indicate the presence of life, such as laser beams, structures built around stars, indications of constructed satellites, or atmospheric chemicals produced by industry.

“The SETI Institute will develop and install an interface on the VLA permitting

unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky,“ Andrew Siemion, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute and Principal Investigator for the Breakthrough Listen Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement. “This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search.”

As well as adding the new interface, the data collected by the VLA will be analyzed for signs of life. “As the VLA conducts standard observations, this new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we’re already collecting,” NRAO Director Tony Beasley said in the statement. “Determining whether we are alone in the universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and NRAO telescopes can play a major role in answering it.”

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Tag: National Radio Astronomy Observatory

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Gets an Upgrade

A 21-year Search for Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life Has Ended Without Finding Any Aliens

The ‘Very Large Array’ in NM Will Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Life