The search for extraterrestrial civilizations gained momentum when SETI joined forces with the National Science Foundation’s Carl H. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) near Socorro, New Mexico. The Quest for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is one of those scientific initiatives that is either a colossal waste of time and money or could lead to one of the greatest events in human history. The problem is that research is conducted with so little information that the number of civilizations in our galaxy ranges from 50 million to one, namely Earth.

To compensate, the SETI Institute is instead focusing on understanding how extraterrestrials might try to make contact, spending more time on increasingly sensitive instruments, and developing strategies to find smart signals hidden in cosmic noise.

The latest step is a partnership with the VLA, which connects three rail lines, each of which are 28 arrays of 25-metre (82-foot) radio antennas weighing 230 tons, each running up to 13 miles (21 km) across the ground. Desert In operation since 1980, the VLA is currently running a project known as the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS), which monitors the radio emission of 80% of the sky.

To take advantage of this monitoring, SETI, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and the Breakthrough Listening Initiative installed a new system called the Commensal Open Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster (COSMIC) that uses data collected by the VLA.

COSMIC analyzes the flow in very narrow radio channels and looks for techno signals that an extraterrestrial radio signal might indicate. In this case, signals are transmitted in very narrow bands of about one hertz in width. It also looks for pulses and transitions when scanning a target of about 10 million stars. The result is a search 1000 times more complete than previous searches.

To test the system, it targeted the deep space probe Voyager 1, about 15 billion miles (24 billion km) away. COSMIC not only studied the individual antennas in the array and detected the spacecraft, but also mapped Voyager’s radio carrier and sidebands.

“COSMIC is collaborative, meaning it works in the background using a copy of the data astronomers receive for other science purposes,” said Paul Demorest, scientist and leader of the VLA/VLBA Science Support Group at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “It’s an ideal and very efficient way to get a lot of telescope time looking for rare signals.”