Scientists have been on the hunt for extraterrestrial lives for decades.
Are human beings alone in this whole universe? There is a long-standing curiosity regarding extraterrestrial entities. Non-profit research organisation SETI or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence has a goal to explore extraterrestrial intelligence. The scientists associated with the institute also predicted on probable time of getting postive response from aliens. In this article, we will discuss about mission conducted by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and SETI to find aliens.
Thanks to sci-fi movies, we imagined numerous structures for aliens. However, we might not be able to see them directly via telescope. The SETI Institute’s Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster (COSMIC) at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is currently on a mission to establish connection with extraterrestrial bodies.
The interdisciplinary research encompasses physical science, biological science, data analytics, machine learning (ML), along with advanced signal detection technologies.
The adaptability makes this mission and detector unique than other projects. The COSMIC system is designed for future upgrades. COSMIC has the potential to expand its capabilities and explore new frequencies. The COSMIC is structured to work beyond searching for aliens only. This will help scientists understand about many mysteries of the universe including dark matter.
“COSMIC is really the most comprehensive SETI search on a single instrument in history. That's very exciting and gives the COSMIC effort access to a complete and independent copy of the data streams from the entire VLA,” said Bill Diamond, the President and CEO of the SETI Institute.
Project scientist Dr. Chenoa Tremblay mentioned: “COSMIC introduces modern Ethernet-based digital architecture on the VLA, allowing for a test bed for future technologies as we move into the next generation era.”
“Currently, the focus is on creating one of the largest surveys for technological signals, with over 500,000 sources observed in the first six months. However, the flexibility of the design allows for a wide range of other scientific opportunities, such as studying fast radio burst pulse structures and searching for axion dark matter candidates. We hope to open opportunities for other scientists to use our high time (nanoseconds) or our high spectral resolution (sub-Hz) to complete their research. It is an exciting time for increasing the capabilities of this historic telescope,” he mentioned.
Established in 1984, the SETI Institute is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary research and education organization. It has a mission “To lead humanity’s quest to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe and share that knowledge with the world,” according to the official website.
The SETI Institute has numerous research partner for industry, academics, and government agencies, like NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Bill Diamond also told about initial findings: “Much of the first several decades of SETI, the effort has been quite minimal, looking with fairly 'insensitive' instruments in fairly narrow parts of the radio spectrum in random parts of the sky. So hardly anything that could be considered a comprehensive endeavor.”
NASA built Kepler space telescope to conduct experiments on finding extraterrestrial entities. Regarding that, Bill Diamond told: “During nine years of deep space scoping, it showed our galaxy contains billions of exoplanets. It told us that planets are everywhere and a lot of them are potentially habitable.”
In coming years, COSMIC will enhance our understanding of the universe. Scientists are hopeful about establishing connection with aliens by upcoming decade.
