Astronomers have done that launched an unprecedented search for ‘technosignatures’ – indications of technology from highly advanced civilizations – in galaxies far beyond the Milky Way.
Technosignatures refer to evidence of technology, past or present, that could indirectly confirm the existence of intelligent life in distant galaxies.
Potential technosignatures could include artificial light sources, solar energy collectors, massive space structures, or clusters of satellites.
Although technosignatures have been searched for before, this is the first attempt to search beyond our own galaxy. The effort includes a radio telescope array in Australia that can scan for signs of life not only in the Milky Way but also in 2,800 other galaxies.
The initiative is a partnership between the SETI Institute, the Berkeley SETI Research Center and the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research.
It uses the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a network of 4,096 radio antennas arranged in 256 grids in the remote outback of Western Australia.
This isn’t the MWA’s first search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In 2020, the array was used for one of the most extensive hunts for alien technology to date.
That mission targeted a region near the constellation Vela, which contains more than 10 million stars. For 17 hours, the system searched for low-frequency signals, but no evidence of intelligent life was detected.
