Breakthrough Listen Releases 1 Million Gigabytes of Data from Its Search for E.T.

Breakthrough Listen is searching the universe for signals from alien technology, and the project recently announced that its made the largest data release ever in the search for extraterrestrial life.

The $100 million endeavor aims to scan 1 million stars in our neighborhood, 100 nearby galaxies and the plane of the Milky Way. According to a recent statement, the project has already cast a massive net in its quest to catch an alien signal or two. That hasn't happened yet, but the project still has news to report.

In a statement released Tuesday (June 18), Breakthrough Listen said it has collected almost 1 petabyte of digital data, or 1 million gigabytes, which is accessible to the public.

"This data release is a tremendous milestone for the Breakthrough Listen team," Danny Price, Breakthrough Listen Project Scientist for the Parkes Radio Telescope, said in the statement. "We scoured thousands of hours of observations of nearby stars, across billions of frequency channels. We found no evidence of artificial signals from beyond Earth, but this doesn't mean there isn't intelligent life out there: we may just not have looked in the right place yet, or peered deep enough to detect faint signals."

Breakthrough Listen's science team at the University of California, Berkeley's SETI Research Center came up with a way to analyze the large swaths of information for what scientists call "technosignatures." That category represents the potential footprints of technologies like transmitters and propulsion devices, but these signals are difficult to tease out from human-made technological chatter. Researchers described the techniques they are using to review the data in two upcoming studies, according to the statement.

Breakthrough Listen officials say the project's researchers are listening in to a range of radio and optical wavelengths. So far, their ears are the Green Bank Radio Telescope in West Virginia and the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia, with more facilities set to begin collecting observations soon.

Founded in 2015 by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, Breakthrough Listen has now submitted a broader analysis of 1,327 stars, which officials said is about 80% of its nearby star sample.

Source: www.space.com...
Data: breakthroughinitiatives.org...

originally posted by: alfa015
[...]We found no evidence of artificial signals from beyond Earth, but this doesn't mean there isn't intelligent life out there: we may just not have looked in the right place yet, or peered deep enough to detect faint signals."

Sure, sure. Same old excuse. Of course nobody can prove that there aren't ET out there, because you can't prove a negative. And if you come up empty handed, that just means you need more money, right? Every study.

Most of these searches assume aliens are communicating with narrow-band technology. If they're using broadband, our detection methods are useless. They're a waste of money in most cases.

Did you try FM radio? I swear every alien civilization is using such advanced way of communication.

a reply to: face23785

Telepathic communications is the latest craze amongst advanced civilizations.

originally posted by: KiwiNite
Did you try FM radio? I swear every alien civilization is using such advanced way of communication.

They love to listen to those old Led Zep albums played straight through. And all that noodly jazz.

a reply to: carewemust

Tachyons and anti-tachyons through a directed wormhole. Their "subspace communication".

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: face23785

Telepathic communications is the latest craze amongst advanced civilizations.

That's what the remote viewers say. There's a big psychic party going on out there. However, I also remember one of them (Joe McMoneagle?) say that if a remote viewer managed to butt into one of those parties the aliens would first be surprised, and then they'd be ignored like a cat that snuck in through the window.

1 petabyte... that would be one humdinger of a download! A quick calculation in Excel, with a download of 50 mega-bits/second, it would take 5 years to download on my home connection. Then what? Is there a program that will do the analysis like I used to do with SETI?

originally posted by: LogicalGraphitti
1 petabyte... that would be one humdinger of a download! A quick calculation in Excel, with a download of 50 mega-bits/second, it would take 5 years to download on my home connection. Then what? Is there a program that will do the analysis like I used to do with SETI?

This sounds like a job for Artificial Intelligence. It loves to do this kind of data parsing.

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: alfa015
[...]We found no evidence of artificial signals from beyond Earth, but this doesn't mean there isn't intelligent life out there: we may just not have looked in the right place yet, or peered deep enough to detect faint signals."

Sure, sure. Same old excuse. Of course nobody can prove that there aren't ET out there, because you can't prove a negative. And if you come up empty handed, that just means you need more money, right? Every study.

What are you on about, same old excuse? Just because they can't find anything yet means nothing about excuses.
Not finding anything isn't proof there's no ET and they don't pretend otherwise.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.