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14 JULY 2022 time 15:00
Colloquium
On the Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life Near the Galactic Center (and Plane)
Karen Perez (Columbia University, USA)
Over the last decade, discoveries of Earth-type exoplanets have extended the possibility of other life-bearing worlds. However, the question of the existence of intelligent life might remain elusive unless a dedicated attempt is made to extensively Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The Breakthrough Listen (BL) program is a 10-year effort to conduct the most sensitive, comprehensive, and intensive search for advanced intelligent life on other worlds ever performed. Two of the primary targets of the BL program are the Galactic Center (GC) and a comprehensive blind survey of the entire Galactic Plane (GP) to search for artificial narrowband transmitters from ETIs. The line of sight toward the GC offers the largest integrated galactic star count of any direction in the sky, is a widely cited possible location for a beacon built by an advanced intelligence, and is the most energetic region in the Milky Way. Likewise, the GP is an ideal direction to search for such signals due to the increased likelihood that transmitters would emit toward this region as opposed to random directions. Here, I discuss our observation and narrowband search strategy, as well as results, for the Green Bank Telescope (GBT), the Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT), and Parkes Telescope from our GC Survey (0.7 MHz -8 GHz) so far. I also discuss an extension of these strategies for our GP Parkes 21cm Multibeam Receiver (1.2-1.55 GHz) Survey, which covers roughly 3000 square degrees during 1200 hours, were we have extended the multibeam coincidence rejection technique used for detecting Fast Radio Bursts to scrutinize narrowband signals detected across 13-beams. This allows us to discriminate terrestrial interferences from truly sky localized signals to help us reject large fractions of false positives. I will review our strategy and preliminary search results, as well as its applications going forward as we look towards expanding our search with other multibeam telescopes.
Brief CV of Karen Perez:
She is a rising 4th year PhD student at Columbia University, where she studies radio and X-ray pulsars. She is also a Visiting Graduate Student with Breakthrough Listen, with whom she has been working since 2019 on searching for technnosignatures.