Berkeley: Breakthrough Listen Releases 2 PB of Data from SETI Survey

[bystander]

Breakthrough Listen Scans Milky Way Galaxy for Beacons of Civilization
University of California, Berkeley | Breakthrough Listen | 2020 Feb 14

Artist’s concept of a nearby civilization signaling Earth after observing our planet crossing in front of the sun. Astronomers have now scanned 20 nearby stars in the Earth transit zone in search of such signals. (Credit: UC Berkeley/Breakthrough Listen)

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The Breakthrough Listen Initiative today (Friday, Feb. 14) released data from the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy and the region around its central black hole, and it is inviting the public to search the data for signals from intelligent civilizations.

At a media briefing today in Seattle as part of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Breakthrough Listen principal investigator Andrew Siemion of the University of California, Berkeley, announced the release of nearly 2 petabytes of data, the second data dump from the four-year old search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). A petabyte of radio and optical telescope data was released last June, the largest release of SETI data in the history of the field.

The data, most of it fresh from the telescope prior to detailed study from astronomers, comes from a survey of the radio spectrum between 1 and 12 gigahertz (GHz). About half of the data comes via the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia, which, because of its location in the Southern Hemisphere, is perfectly situated and instrumented to scan the entire galactic disk and galactic center. The telescope is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, owned and managed by the country’s national science agency, CSIRO.

The remainder of the data was recorded by the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, the world’s largest steerable radio dish, and an optical telescope called the Automated Planet Finder, built and operated by UC Berkeley and located at Lick Observatory outside San Jose, California. ...

[neufer]

WARNING: about 25% of the signal here consists of Mike Bloomberg ads.

[bystander]

SETI Institute and National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Team Up for SETI Science at the Very Large Array
SETI Institute | NRAO | 2020 Feb 14

The Very Large Array (VLA) is a collection of 27 radio antennas located at the NRAO site in Socorro, New Mexico. Each antenna in the array measures 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter and weighs about 230 tons. Credit: Alex Savello/NRAO

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The SETI Institute and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) are announcing a collaboration to bring a state-of-the-art search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) instrument to the Very Large Array (VLA) for the first time. Thanks to a new, cost-effective Ethernet interface, it will be possible to employ the VLA to search for technosignatures 24 hours a day - 7 days a week, as well as explore other natural astrophysical phenomena in novel ways. The new system is called the Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (COSMIC SETI).

Located in New Mexico, the VLA is the most productive radio telescope in the world, consisting of twenty-seven 25-meter telescopes that are used by astronomers to observe black holes, conduct research about the formation of the universe and study young stars to understand how planets form. Despite being prominently featured in the 1997 film Contact, featuring Jodie Foster as an astronomer searching for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, the VLA has never before hosted a dedicated SETI instrument. ...