Breakthrough Listen to date has largely focused on the search for "life as we know it" - including Earthlike planets around Sunlike stars such as Kepler 160. But what if extraterrestrial intelligences are not like us, but are found in the frigid reaches of the outer Solar System, the extreme gravity of neutron stars, the brilliant cores of active galaxies, or the hearts of the richest galaxy clusters? Now we're announcing an expanded approach, targeting "one of everything" in the Universe. The new Exotica Catalog includes over 700 distinct objects. It has an example of each type in our Prototype sample, extreme objects with record-breaking properties in our Superlative sample, and lingering mysteries in our Anomaly sample. A small Control sample rounds out the list with sky locations we do not expect to be special as a comparison. With the Exotica catalog, we aim to answer many questions. Have we been looking in the wrong places? Might a few of the objects we think are natural actually be artificial? Could some natural phenomenon or problem with our instruments fool us into thinking we are looking at a signal from an intelligence? What can we learn by using the unique Breakthrough Listen backend to observe the natural world?
The paper is available:
One of Everything: The Breakthrough Listen Exotica Catalog
Also available:
CSV containing all the Solar System objects, excluding the unassigned/opportunistic Earth satellites: BLExoticaCatalog_20E_SolSys.csv
Fields are: ID, plaintext name, name of primary body, ID of primary body, semimajor axis (AU), eccentricity, inclination (degrees), semimajor axis around Sun (AU), Minimum Orbital Intersection Distance (AU), mass (M_earth), Solar insolation at semimajor axis (Earth = 1), radius (km), maximum angular size (arcsec)
CSV file containing all sidereal targets: BLExoticaCatalog_20E_Sidereal.csv
Fields are: ID, plaintext name, name recognized by Simbad, RA (decimal), Dec (decimal), redshift, luminosity distance (pc), magnification after graviational lensing, effective luminosity distance after gravitational lensing (pc), proper motion in RA (milliarcsec/yr), proper motion in declination (milliarcsec/yr), angular size
CSV containing all bibcodes for ADS-linked references cited in full appendices (version 20E) for each source.: 20E_RefsTable.csv
When there are several references cited for a table or figure for a given source, they are separated by spaces. ID, plaintext name, Solar System flag, samples [P = prototype; S = superlative; A = non-SETI anomaly; E = SETI anomaly; C = control], phylum list, Table A1 bibcodes (Prototypes), Table B1 bibcodes (Superlatives), Table C1 bibcodes (Anomaly, Non-SETI), Table C2 bibcodes (Anomaly, SETI), Table D1 bibcodes (Control, original), Table D1 bibcodes (Control, current explanation), Figure 4 Sidereal (Planet M_p-insolation) bibcodes, Figure 5a (Stellar CMD) bibcodes, Figure 5b (Stellar HR) bibcodes, Figure 6a (Galaxy CMD) bibcodes, Figure 6b (Galaxy M*-SFR) bibcodes, Table E1 (General Solar System sources) bibcodes, Table E2 (General sidereal sources) bibcodes
Download the background art seen here (Credit: Breakthrough Listen / Danielle Futselaar) available as:
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low resolution .jpg -
medium resolution .jpg -
medium resolution .pdf