Berliner Boersenzeitung - Inside the 'golden age' of alien hunting at the Green Bank Telescope

EUR -
AED 3.996561
AFN 72.725294
ALL 98.323637
AMD 420.572784
ANG 1.958573
AOA 991.788876
ARS 1076.134061
AUD 1.658911
AWG 1.961263
AZN 1.854055
BAM 1.955673
BBD 2.194258
BDT 129.861596
BGN 1.955673
BHD 0.409773
BIF 3157.495671
BMD 1.08808
BND 1.438807
BOB 7.536512
BRL 6.202599
BSD 1.08673
BTN 91.400085
BWP 14.52806
BYN 3.55647
BYR 21326.35992
BZD 2.190558
CAD 1.518035
CDF 3141.834075
CHF 0.940411
CLF 0.037867
CLP 1044.862384
CNY 7.750069
CNH 7.74636
COP 4807.788876
CRC 557.263938
CUC 1.08808
CUP 28.834109
CVE 110.257865
CZK 25.448554
DJF 193.517477
DKK 7.490671
DOP 65.395768
DZD 144.348659
EGP 53.012569
ERN 16.321194
ETB 130.513654
FJD 2.449054
FKP 0.832565
GBP 0.842134
GEL 2.975941
GGP 0.832565
GHS 17.713854
GIP 0.832565
GMD 77.801881
GNF 9372.39349
GTQ 8.396457
GYD 227.255294
HKD 8.462217
HNL 27.394227
HRK 7.495813
HTG 143.010745
HUF 410.101365
IDR 17244.973386
ILS 4.083046
IMP 0.832565
INR 91.544325
IQD 1423.607875
IRR 45799.994199
ISK 149.556959
JEP 0.832565
JMD 172.258853
JOD 0.771562
JPY 166.427256
KES 140.190928
KGS 93.361362
KHR 4416.714184
KMF 493.825338
KPW 979.271384
KRW 1501.920195
KWD 0.333617
KYD 0.905641
KZT 531.465608
LAK 23851.456515
LBP 97316.602407
LKR 318.359398
LRD 208.656497
LSL 19.126862
LTL 3.212817
LVL 0.658169
LYD 5.236661
MAD 10.680109
MDL 19.452741
MGA 5009.675812
MKD 61.606013
MMK 3534.040058
MNT 3697.294469
MOP 8.705337
MRU 43.145208
MUR 49.899742
MVR 16.767718
MWK 1884.378057
MXN 22.063032
MYR 4.764161
MZN 69.539577
NAD 19.126862
NGN 1792.615173
NIO 39.987412
NOK 11.960672
NPR 146.240536
NZD 1.824566
OMR 0.417113
PAB 1.08683
PEN 4.101835
PGK 4.355718
PHP 63.505807
PKR 301.784871
PLN 4.358718
PYG 8585.444415
QAR 3.961644
RON 4.994725
RSD 117.042426
RUB 106.493109
RWF 1485.903844
SAR 4.086178
SBD 9.05275
SCR 14.801342
SDG 654.483872
SEK 11.534345
SGD 1.443124
SHP 0.832565
SLE 24.754214
SLL 22816.481435
SOS 621.05981
SRD 37.663916
STD 22521.050642
SVC 9.508385
SYP 2733.832898
SZL 19.121763
THB 36.967545
TJS 11.551952
TMT 3.808279
TND 3.365082
TOP 2.548395
TRY 37.349968
TTD 7.366523
TWD 34.750872
TZS 2934.21012
UAH 44.914893
UGX 3978.742526
USD 1.08808
UYU 45.007087
UZS 13905.100167
VEF 3941625.468227
VES 46.573289
VND 27528.41357
VUV 129.179027
WST 3.047911
XAF 655.914554
XAG 0.032257
XAU 0.0004
XCD 2.94059
XDR 0.816847
XOF 655.914554
XPF 119.331742
YER 272.40112
ZAR 19.216251
ZMK 9794.025888
ZMW 29.151114
ZWL 350.361183
  • NGG

    0.6700

    64.26

    +1.04%

  • GSK

    0.1200

    36.88

    +0.33%

  • AZN

    0.2700

    71.42

    +0.38%

  • BTI

    0.0900

    35.07

    +0.26%

  • CMSC

    -0.0200

    24.53

    -0.08%

  • SCS

    0.1100

    12.14

    +0.91%

  • RIO

    0.4400

    65.33

    +0.67%

  • CMSD

    0.1500

    24.81

    +0.6%

  • RBGPF

    66.4100

    66.41

    +100%

  • RYCEF

    0.0500

    7.13

    +0.7%

  • VOD

    0.0800

    9.35

    +0.86%

  • RELX

    0.8600

    47.08

    +1.83%

  • BCC

    1.1800

    134.21

    +0.88%

  • JRI

    -0.0300

    13.05

    -0.23%

  • BCE

    -0.1600

    32.1

    -0.5%

  • BP

    -0.1300

    29.23

    -0.44%

Inside the 'golden age' of alien hunting at the Green Bank Telescope
Inside the 'golden age' of alien hunting at the Green Bank Telescope / Photo: Brendan Smialowski - AFP

Inside the 'golden age' of alien hunting at the Green Bank Telescope

Nestled between mountains in a secluded corner of West Virginia, a giant awakens: the Green Bank Telescope begins its nightly vigil, scanning the cosmos for secrets.

Text size:

If intelligent life exists beyond Earth, there's a good chance the teams analyzing the data from the world's largest, fully steerable radio astronomy facility will be the first to know.

"People have been asking themselves the question, 'Are we alone in the universe?' ever since they first gazed up at the night sky and wondered if there were other worlds out there," says Steve Croft, project scientist for the Breakthrough Listen initiative.

For the past decade, this groundbreaking scientific endeavor has partnered with a pioneering, US government-funded site built in the 1950s to search for "technosignatures" -- traces of technology that originate far beyond our own solar system.

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or "SETI," was long dismissed as the realm of eccentrics and was even cut off from federal funding by Congress thirty years ago.

But today, the field is experiencing a renaissance and seeing an influx of graduates, bolstered by advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as recent discoveries showing that nearly every star in the night sky hosts planets, many of which are Earth-like.

"It feels to me like this is something of a golden age," says Croft, an Oxford-trained radio astronomer who began his career studying astrophysical phenomena, from supermassive black holes to the emissions of exploding stars.

- Is ET calling? -

The story of the "National Radio Quiet Zone" dates back to 1958, when the US federal government designated a region in West Virginia to help astronomers shield their sensitive equipment from interference.

This means no radio signals, no cellphone coverage, and limited WiFi for the surrounding community. Even the vehicles transporting staff to and from the telescope must run on diesel, as gas cars' spark plugs generate electrical interference.

"I think the community takes a certain pride in having a premier scientific facility right here," says Paul Vosteen, who has worked at the observatory for the past eight years.

Standing on the highest platform of the 100-meter giant dish, Vosteen gestures toward the Allegheny Mountains, which act as a natural barrier for radio signals in this bowl-shaped valley.

Radio astronomy began by happy accident when American physicist Karl Jansky discovered radio waves coming from the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, in 1933.

Since then, it has allowed astronomers to peer beyond the planets, stars, and dust visible through optical telescopes.

From discovering pulsars to conducting sensitive observations of atomic hydrogen that shed new light on galaxy formation -- and more recently, detecting fast radio bursts -- radio astronomy has been key to numerous advances.

There's also a long-standing theory that if other civilizations exist, they might emit radio waves, just as ours has since the dawn of radio communication in the 19th century.

In Carl Sagan's novel "Contact," humanity is first alerted to extraterrestrial presence by a retransmission of Adolf Hitler's opening speech at the 1936 Summer Olympics -- the first TV signal strong enough to escape Earth's ionosphere.

A framework for estimating the number of detectable civilizations scattered across the galaxy is found in the "Drake Equation," devised by the legendary astronomer Frank Drake. Now one of the most recognized formulas in science, it's even a popular tattoo and T-shirt choice among alien enthusiasts.

- 'Chances are improving' -

Each year, for a week in late spring, Breakthrough Listen's team from the University of California, Berkeley, makes a pilgrimage to the telescope during a period of track maintenance for the 17-million-pound structure.

"It's a relaxing time; every time I'm here, it's nice being in the National Radio Quiet Zone because there's no cellphone, no television -- it's a kind of focused environment," says Matt Lebofsky, lead system administrator.

"Sometimes we need to metaphorically kick the tires, do things ourselves to get a ground truth about how our servers are behaving."

Inside the server room, the sound of 6,000 whirring hard drives holding 40 petabytes of data—equivalent to 40,000 laptops—makes it impossible to speak without shouting.

"We're essentially looking for 'weird things' in the data," Croft explains, something that suggests life forms might be trying to reach out, or that scientists are picking up their accidental transmissions.

There have been a few moments of heightened excitement in the SETI community, including the 1977 detection of the so-called "Wow!" signal from the constellation Sagittarius, which remains unexplained.

More recently, in 2020, the team identified Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1 from the nearest star system, Proxima Centauri, but after extensive analysis, it was concluded to be human radio interference.

"It's not deflating at all," insists Lebofsky. On the contrary, he feels more optimistic than ever, given the vast amounts of data now being collected and processed compared to the early days. "I feel like the chances are improving exponentially every year."

(U.Gruber--BBZ)