< h1 >The University of Oxford Selected as New International Headquarters for Breakthrough Listen SETI Project< /h1>
< p >The University of Oxford in the United Kingdom has been chosen as the new international headquarters for Breakthrough Listen, the world’s largest SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) initiative. This $100-million-dollar private venture by the Breakthrough Initiatives foundation focuses on exploring technosignatures, signals or indications of technologically-advanced extraterrestrial species. The initiative was previously headquartered at the University of California, Berkeley, but the move to Oxford will enable better utilization of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), a vast radio dish and antenna array in South Africa and Australia.< /p>
< p >The SKA, anticipated to be operational by 2030, will revolutionize radio astronomy by providing 50 times the sensitivity of other radio-telescope arrays and enabling sky surveying at a rate 10,000 times faster than current capabilities. Oxford’s physicists have played a prominent role in developing hardware and software for the SKA, allowing them to create specialized instruments for the SETI project.< /p>
< p >Joining the Oxford team will be Andrew Siemion of the University of California, Berkeley, who has been the Principal Investigator for Breakthrough Listen since it began. “We are thrilled to commence a new chapter of Listen here at Oxford,” said Peter Worden, Breakthrough’s Executive Director. “This collaboration represents a fusion of knowledge, resources, and passion in our quest to understand our place in the universe.”< /p>
< p >The partnership at Oxford coincides with Breakthrough Listen’s collaboration with South Africa’s MeerKAT array, composed of 64 radio antennas, which functions as a precursor to the SKA. Starting in December 2022, MeerKAT began listening for extraterrestrial radio signals emitted by a million stars.< /p>
< p >Breakthrough Listen concentrates primarily on the search for radio signals, but also explores more general technosignatures. These are defined as evidence for the presence of technological extraterrestrial civilizations. The project purposefully maintains an open-ended definition to avoid excluding any possibilities based on human biases. For example, astronomers actively investigate anomalous astrophysical transients, which are bursts of energy or light without an identifiable explanation. Such phenomena could potentially be attributed to extraterrestrial engineering on an inconceivably large scale.< /p>
< p >Breakthrough Listen scientists will analyze data collected by the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), part of the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile set to become operational in 2024. They will specifically search for anomalous astrophysical transients in LSST data. Furthermore, the initiative searches for “megastructures,” massive non-natural objects, by examining transits detected by instruments like NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Tabby’s Star, known for its irregular and deep dimming events caused by unknown objects, serves as an example. Although dust clouds were eventually determined to be the cause, the presence of real megastructures in a star system would yield similar transit events.< /p>
< p >The Oxford group will particularly focus on the search for life on nearby exoplanets. To accomplish this, they will develop state-of-the-art machine-learning algorithms capable of analyzing vast amounts of data with greater efficiency and detail than traditional methods. Already, astronomers have utilized machine learning to identify eight potential SETI signals within data from the Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia.< /p>
< p >Looking towards the future, Oxford’s scientists will also explore proposals for a SETI lunar far side radio telescope. The radio-quiet environment on the far side of the moon, unaffected by radio frequency interference from Earth, offers unparalleled sensitivity for detecting faint radio signals.< /p>
