SETI Project Detects First Signals But They Are Not E.T.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) at UC Berkley has released what they are calling candidate extraterrestrial signals from the Kepler mission.

In an effort to detect the radio emissions from a hypothetical extraterrestrial intelligence, it helps to know where to look. Space, after all, is a very big place and the chances of accidentally stumbling across an alien television signal is very low.

So, using data from the Kepler space telescope, astronomers are becoming more focused on "listening" for radio signals coming from stars known (or at least thought) to have planets orbiting them. At first it seemed the first "candidate" signals have been detected.  After posting the plots below on January 5, it became clear that SETI had not stated as definitively and absolutely as possible that these signals are interference.   

What do the plots represent?

These are plots of electromagnetic energy as a function of frequency and time. Brighter colors represent more radio energy at a particular time and frequency. For example, a radio station transmitting at 101.5 MHz would produce a large amount of energy near that frequency.

Why are these signals interesting?

We know these signals are interference, but look similar to what we think might be produced from an extraterrestrial technology. They are narrow in frequency, much narrower than would be produced by any known astrophysical phenomena, and they drift in frequency with time, as we would expect because of the doppler effect imposed by the relative motion of the transmitter and the receiving radio telescope. Even though these signals are interference, detecting events with similar characteristics to what we expect from ET is a good indication that the first steps of our detection algorithms are working properly.

What's next?

These first results are tests of the algorithms we'll apply to all our observations of Kepler planets. During the coming weeks, SETI will be posting more of our results as we process the nearly 50 TB of data we collected in early 2011.



Download all of the candidate signals in PDF form.


http://seti.berkeley.edu/kepler-seti-interference