Newswise — May 30, 2023, Mountain View, CA – Akshay Suresh, a grad student at Cornell University, leads an exceptional scientific effort -- a pioneering quest to unveil cyclic signals emanating from the core of the Milky Way known as the Breakthrough Listen Investigation for Periodic Spectral Signals (BLIPSS). Such recurring patterns might hold the key to unraveling the enigmas of extraterrestrial intelligence in our galaxy. Suresh and his co-writers elaborate on the project's findings so far in a paper accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal, "A 4–8 GHz Galactic Center Search for Periodic Technosignatures."
BLIPSS forms a partnership involving Cornell University, the SETI Institute, and Breakthrough Listen. By concentrating their efforts on the central expanse of the Milky Way, which boasts a dense cluster of stars and potentially habitable exoplanets, the BLIPSS collective enhances the likelihood of acquiring persuasive indications of extraterrestrial advancements. If an extraterrestrial society intended to establish communication with other civilizations across the Milky Way, the galactic core presents itself as a promising location for a strategic beacon.
“BLIPSS showcases the cutting-edge potential of software as a science multiplier for SETI,” said Suresh.
Dr. Vishal Gajjar, an astronomer at the SETI Institute, serves as one of Suresh's project advisors. "Historically, radio SETI has predominantly focused on seeking continuous signals," Gajjar stated. "Our investigation unveils the impressive energy efficiency of a series of pulses for interstellar communication over immense distances. Significantly, this study represents the pioneering and extensive pursuit of these signals."
Commencing with the assessment of established pulsars, the team verified the effectiveness of their algorithm in identifying the anticipated cyclic emissions. They then shifted their focus to a collection of Galactic Center scans obtained by the Breakthrough Listen instrument on the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) situated in West Virginia. Diverging from pulsars that emit signals across a wide spectrum of radio frequencies, BLIPSS concentrated its exploration on recurrent signals within a narrower frequency range. This specific range covered less than a tenth of the bandwidth typically occupied by an average FM radio station.
Dr. Steve Croft, the Breakthrough Listen Project Scientist for GBT and Adjunct Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, emphasized the importance of this approach, which combines the use of narrow frequency ranges with periodic patterns that may indicate purposeful technological endeavors by intelligent civilizations. Suresh's innovative technique introduces a fresh methodology to efficiently navigate through this figurative haystack, enabling the team to uncover compelling indications of advanced extraterrestrial life forms.
A PDF of the paper (accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal), links to the datasets examined, and an artist’s conception of an artificial periodic transmitter are available at https://seti.berkeley.edu/blipss/.
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