Related papers: Limits of Detecting Extraterrestrial Civilizations
This paper demonstrates fundamental limits of sensor networks for detection problems where the number of hypotheses is exponentially large. Such problems characterize many important applications including detection and classification of…
Recent observations of changes in radioactive decay rates associated with the annual variation of the Earth-Sun distance, with solar rotation, and particularly with solar storms, suggest that radioactive decay rates may be responding to…
The Milky Way Galaxy contains an unknown number, $N$, of civilizations that emit electromagnetic radiation (of unknown wavelengths) over a finite lifetime, $L$. Here we are assuming that the radiation is not produced indefinitely, but…
This study examines the hypothesis that the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), culminating in the emergence of Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), could act as a "Great Filter" that is responsible for the scarcity of…
The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) SETI Committee has long provided guiding principles for responding to a potential detection of a SETI signal. The foundational Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the…
First contact with another civilization, or simply another intelligence of some kind, will likely be quite different depending on whether that intelligence is more or less advanced than ourselves. If we assume that the lifetime distribution…
It is well-known that the chances of success of SETI depend on the longevity of technological civilizations or, more broadly, on the duration of the signs of their existence, or technosignatures. Here, we re-examine this general tenet in…
The aim of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is to find technologically-capable life beyond Earth through their technosignatures. On 2019 April 29, the Breakthrough Listen SETI project observed Proxima Centauri with the…
Ultra Fast Astronomy is a new frontier becoming enabled by improved detector technology allowing discovery of optical transients on millisecond to nanosecond time scales. These may reveal counterparts of energetic processes such as fast…
What is the chance we start a conversation with another civilization like our own? Our technological society produced signals that could be received by other extraterrestrial civilizations, within a sphere around us with a radius of $\sim…
The idea that credible searches for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (ETI) could be carried out were laid out in detail in the (now classic) paper by Morrison and Cocconi (1959). They suggested using the radio band for these searches. Since…
A new solution to the Fermi Paradox is presented: probes or visits from putative alien civilizations have a very low probability until a civilization reaches a certain age (called the Contact Era) after the onset of radio communications. If…
What would SETI Beacon transmitters be like if built by civilizations with a variety of motivations, but who cared about cost? We studied in a companion paper how, for fixed power density in the far field, we could build a cost-optimum…
Many articulations of the Fermi Paradox have as a premise, implicitly or explicitly, that humanity has searched for signs of extraterrestrial radio transmissions and concluded that there are few or no obvious ones to be found. Tarter et al.…
Ours could realistically be the generation to discover evidence of life beyond Earth. With this privileged potential comes responsibility. The magnitude of the question, "are we alone?", and the public interest therein, opens the…
While humanity has not yet observed any extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), contact with ETI remains possible. Contact could occur through a broad range of scenarios that have varying consequences for humanity. However, many discussions of…
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…
Although it might not be self-evident, it is in fact entirely possible to calculate the probability of detecting alien radio signals by understanding what types of extraterrestrial radio emissions can be expected and what properties these…
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence aims to find evidence of technosignatures, which can point toward the possible existence of technologically advanced extraterrestrial life. Radio signals similar to those engineered on Earth may…
We hereby consider the problem of detectability of macro-engineering projects over interstellar distances, in the context of Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Freeman J. Dyson and his imaginative precursors, like Konstantin…