(ORDO NEWS) — An international team of astronomers led by specialists from the Australian state association for scientific and applied research CSIRO presented a report on the results of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the Milky Way. The results were expected – the researchers did not find signs of the existence of other civilizations.
A scientific article entitled “Search for technosignatures in the direction of the galactic center at a frequency of 150 MHz” is published on the arxiv.org preprint site, and Phys.org talks briefly about the study.
This report is the fourth in a series of similar observations. In each of them, astronomers searched for signs of the activity of intelligent civilizations in the spectrum of low-frequency radio waves. Data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Australia were used for the analysis. The lead author of the new study is Chenoa Trembley of CSIRO.
The authors of the article write that seven-hour observations were made over two nights using the MWA antennas. This time the search was focused on the center of our galaxy, where the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* is located. Astronomers have focused their attention on searching for technosignatures in 144 planetary systems.
Let us clarify that in the theory of technosignatures, these are any technical evidence of the activity of an intelligent civilization. In a broad sense, this is absolutely any evidence of effects that can arise only as a result of the use of technology.
In other studies, the search for life usually focuses on biosignatures, that is, the search for molecules or isotopes that indicate the possible presence of life. Unlike biosignatures, technosignatures can accurately testify to the signs of the existence of an advanced civilization.
However, scientists do not yet have such evidence. MWA observations were made at 150 MHz. Astronomers hoped that they would be able to fix the signals of transmitters at this wavelength. However, the result was complete silence – the researchers did not find any traces of extraterrestrial intelligence.
In their paper, they explain why the choice fell on the center of the Milky Way. This was done solely to save effort, since the center of our galaxy contains the largest number of stars, around which a huge number of planets revolve. Some of them resemble the Earth in their characteristics.
The absence of the expected result was also considered a good result by the authors of the work. In their opinion, the network of search for extraterrestrial intelligence should be spread even wider. The study also showed that a large number of planets in a relatively small outer space does not increase the chances of finding life at all, and perhaps even reduces them.
“The high density of stars within a galaxy means that cataclysms such as supernova explosions and magnetic flares are more likely to impact exoplanets, potentially wiping out any life on their surface,” the authors write.
Note that although the study was aimed at studying specifically selected 144 planetary systems, it also included a broader “blind search”. The latter covered more than three million stars that are located near the galactic center. “Probable technosignatures have not been found,” the report says.
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