COSMIC: New Experiment Expands Search for Alien Technosignatures

The search for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life has taken a significant leap forward with the launch of a new experiment called COSMIC. This groundbreaking project is a collaboration between the SETI Institute, Breakthrough Listen, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

Operating at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, COSMIC is set to revolutionize the search for alien technosignatures. Unlike previous surveys that could only examine a few thousand star systems, COSMIC will be able to listen in on hundreds of thousands, and potentially millions, of star systems at frequencies between 0.75 and 50 GHz. Covering 80% of the entire sky, this is a significant advancement in SETI research.

The COSMIC project piggybacks on the VLA Sky Survey (VLASS), which provides raw data to the SETI scientists for real-time analysis. This allows for immediate detection and follow-up on any interesting signals, which is crucial since potential extraterrestrial signals could be brief and require quick identification.

COSMIC boasts exceptional time sensitivity, capable of detecting radio signals as short as nanoseconds. This is an important feature as it enables the detection of potential nanosecond pulses from extraterrestrial sources, which may be a more cost-effective method of communication across interstellar distances.

The COSMIC system has been designed with future upgrades in mind, allowing for the possibility of increasing the number of observed targets and implementing advanced data analysis techniques, such as machine learning. Furthermore, the COSMIC system’s versatility extends beyond SETI, with potential applications in studying pulsar structures and searching for Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs).

As a test of its capabilities, the COSMIC team listened in on a data downlink from NASA‘s Voyager spacecraft, located 14.8 billion miles away from Earth. With approximately half a million radio sources already analyzed, the COSMIC project marks the beginning of the largest SETI search to date.