Breakthrough Listen Making synthetic technosignatures to aid radio SETI searches In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), we are fundamentally looking for signals that have never been detected before. That said, in radio SETI, we do make the assumption that intelligent civilizations emit
Searching for Technosignatures in TESS Targets that Transit During Observation Ideally, in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), we would want to observe every object in the night sky at all times over all frequencies. Yet, as should be obvious, this multidimensional observing
Connecting the dots with optical SETI workshop My name is John Hoang, postdoctoral scholar working at the Berkeley SETI Research Center (BSRC). With help from the team, I recently organized a 2-day workshop to inform the community about several current
Interstellar Societies: Possibility or Improbability? The future of interstellar travel may be the most important factor when considering SETI strategy. Are societies spanning entire galaxies, with billions of inhabited worlds, likely to exist? Are they even possible? Two
Breakthrough Listen Radio Observations of Transiting Exoplanet Systems As we attempt to answer the question, “are we alone in the universe?”, there are many places to search. Although life might not necessarily arise in environments similar to Earth, Earth-like exoplanets are
SETI Target Selection for MeerKAT New approaches in the development of radio telescope arrays enable multiple users to receive and process data simultaneously. This architecture presents unique opportunities to conduct commensal ("piggyback") SETI surveys alongside primary
oumuamua Life in Elliptical Galaxies What happens on galactic scales seems far removed from life on Earth. Galactic habitability is the idea that the cosmic environment of a planet can influence — or inhibit — its life. Studies about galactic
GBT Re-Analyzing Low-Energy ('Smudgy') Bursts in a Breakthrough Listen Observation of FRB 121102 FRB 121102 was the first Fast Radio Burst (FRB) source discovered to repeat. Over the course of many observations since its discovery, a significant number of low-energy (or 'smudgy') narrowband bursts have evaded
SETI Status Update of the Breakthrough Listen - TESS - SETI Survey of Exoplanet Host stars Now in the eleventh month of observations of exoplanet host stars identified by TESS, Breakthrough Listen continues to collect data from the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and Parkes Telescope in search for technosignatures.
megastructures Your Name Here Hello! I’m Piper and I’m currently a summer intern at the Berkeley SETI Research Center with Breakthrough Listen. My project for the summer is to look for signs of artificial structures
GBT Detection of a new magnetar candidate across 4 - 11 GHz with Breakthrough Listen at GBT We report a detection of Swift J1818.0-1607 across 4 to 11 GHz (C and X-bands) using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and the Breakthrough Listen digital backend (MacMahon et
Searching for ET with X-ray Lenses In SETI, brighter is better: the more powerful a signal is, the further away we could detect it. Maybe aliens use huge power plants to keep a beacon going in hopes of grabbing
GBT Breakthrough Listen observations of the “Random Transiter” HD 139139 A mysterious stellar system was identified this year, exhibiting 28 transit-like events over 87 days in Kepler data. This system is called EPIC 249706694 / HD 139139, and many proposed astrophysical transit scenarios have
Rainbow in the Dark How thinking about changing colors could help us catch signals from extraterrestrial intelligence that would otherwise slip through the cracks Let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine you’re out in space with
1327 Star Analysis and Public Data Release Today, we are pleased to announce our release of 1 petabyte of Breakthrough Listen data, and two academic papers as submitted to leading astronomy journals. Building on the results we presented in 2017,
GNU Radio Hacking SETI Berkeley SETI, Breakthrough Listen, the SETI Institute, and the GNU Radio community collaborated to host a hackathon at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in Northern California last week. HCRO is home to the
Mirror in the Sky An old technology is the key to a new method in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The simple mirror can act as a powerful beacon when it is reflecting direct sunlight. Unlike the
data analysis Open data Breakthrough Listen generates huge amounts of data, particularly from the two main radio telescopes where we're doing routine observations, Green Bank and Parkes (and we'll be generating even more once we begin routine
FRB 180301: Astrophysical, aliens or anthropogenic? Back in March last year, we reported the serendipitous detection of a Fast Radio Burst (FRB 180301) during our Breakthrough Listen observations at the CSIRO Parkes radio telescope in Australia. We are pleased
SETI observations of asteroid BZ509 We have just released a short AAS Research Note on a search for technosignatures from asteroid (514017) 2015 BZ509 (aka BZ509). While we didn't find any candidate signals, we'll be searching a selection
AI helps us sift for SETI signals We've just released a new research paper on a deep learning alternative to traditional SETI algorithms. At Breakthrough Listen, we filter candidate signals by their localization on the sky. At the Green Bank
Can you shroud a galaxy? In 1964, Nikolai Kardashev proposed three levels of alien societies: Type I societies use the energy equivalent to all of the starlight falling on their planet, Type II societies the energy of an
Breakthrough Listen announces release of 400 terabytes of Green Bank Telescope data from the repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102 Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of the most mysterious classes of objects in the Universe. They originate outside our Galaxy, only last for around a millisecond, and can release as much energy
Boyajian's Star Data Release BSRC announces the availability of Breakthrough Listen Automated Planet Finder data on Boyajian's Star On 26 December 2018, the Breakthrough Listen team published “The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Searching Boyajian’s
APF High School Student Searches for ET On the Breakthrough Listen team at UC Berkeley SETI Research Center, we're dedicated to making as much of our data publicly available as we can. The files from our observations with the Green
