Related papers: Longevity is the key factor in the search for tech…
Ambitious civilizations that expand for resources at an intergalactic scale could be observable from a cosmological distance, but how likely is one to be visible to us? The question comes down to estimating the appearance rate of such…
Why did the emergence of our species require a timescale similar to the entire habitable period of our planet? Our late appearance has previously been interpreted by Carter (2008) as evidence that observers typically require a very long…
The search for life beyond the Earth is the overarching goal of the NASA Astrobiology Program, and it underpins the science of missions that explore the environments of Solar System planets and exoplanets. However, the detection of…
The origin of life and the detection of alien life have historically been treated as separate scientific research problems. However, they are not strictly independent. Here, we discuss the need for a better integration of the sciences of…
The Zoo Hypothesis posits that we have not detected extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) because they deliberately prevent us from detecting them. While a valid solution to Fermi's Paradox, it is not particularly amenable to rigorous…
Much of the science from the exoplanets detected by the TESS mission relies on precisely predicted transit times that are needed for many follow-up characterization studies. We investigate ephemeris deterioration for simulated TESS planets…
Motivated by recent developments impacting our view of Fermi's paradox (absence of extraterrestrials and their manifestations from our past light cone), we suggest a reassessment of the problem itself, as well as of strategies employed by…
In this work we address the problem of estimating the probabilities of causal contacts between civilisations in the Galaxy. We make no assumptions regarding the origin and evolution of intelligent life. We simply assume a network of…
Exoplanetary systems are prime targets for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). With the recent uptick in the identification of candidate and confirmed exoplanets through the work of missions like the Transiting Exoplanet…
In the field of Astrobiology, the precise location, prevalence and age of potential extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) have not been explicitly explored. Here, we address these inquiries using an empirical galactic simulation model to…
The Fermi paradox has given rise to various attempts to explain why no evidence of extraterrestrial civilisations was found so far on Earth and in our Solar System. Here, we present a dynamical model for the development of such…
We conducted a search for technosignatures in April of 2018 and 2019 with the L-band receiver (1.15-1.73 GHz) of the 100 m diameter Green Bank Telescope. These observations focused on regions surrounding 31 Sun-like stars near the plane of…
Exoplanet hunting efforts have revealed the prevalence of exotic worlds with diverse properties, including Earth-sized bodies, which has fueled our endeavor to search for life beyond the Solar System. Accumulating experiences in…
Given a sufficiently large universe, numerous civilizations almost surely exist. Some of these civilizations will be short-lived and die out relatively early in their development, i.e., before having the chance to spread to other planets.…
Phylogenetic methods have long been used in biology, and more recently have been extended to other fields - for example, linguistics and technology - to study evolutionary histories. Galaxies also have an evolutionary history, and fall…
Probabilistic arguments about the existence of technological life beyond Earth traditionally refer to the Drake equation to draw possible estimates of the number of technologically advanced civilizations releasing, either intentionally or…
For centuries, astronomers have discussed the possibility of inhabited worlds - from Herschel's 18th-century observations suggesting Mars may host life, to the systematic search for technosignatures that began in the 1960s using radio…
The SETI Ellipsoid is a strategy for technosignature candidate selection which assumes that extraterrestrial civilizations who have observed a galactic-scale event -- such as supernova 1987A -- may use it as a Schelling point to broadcast…
In this paper we consider the extent to which a lack of observations from SETI may be used to quantify the Fermi paradox. Building on previous research, we construct a geometrical model to compute the probability of at least one detection…
A period of quenching between the formation of the thick and thin disks of the Milky Way has been recently proposed to explain the observed age-[{\alpha}/Fe] distribution of stars in the solar neighbourhood. However, robust constraints on…