Extraterrestrial signal search gets under way using MeerKAT

BY SARAO AND BREAKTHROUGH INITIATIVES

Breakthrough Listen – the initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the Universe –has started observations of a million nearby stars with the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.

The new search for technosignatures – indicators of technology developed by extraterrestrial intelligence –expands the number of targets searched by a factor of 1,000, and uses a powerful new instrument deployed to MeerKAT.

The astronomers and engineers on the Breakthrough Listen team have spent the last three years developing and installing the most powerful digital instrumentation ever deployed in the search for technosignatures, and integrating the equipment with the MeerKAT control and monitoring systems in cooperation with SARAO engineers.

The new hardware complements Listen’s ongoing searches using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in the USA, the Parkes Telescope in Australia – another SKA pathfinder – and other telescopes around the world. But while Listen’s programmes at the GBT and Parkes involve moving these thousand-tonplus dishes to point at targets all over the sky, the programme on MeerKAT usually won’t mechanically move the antennas.

“MeerKAT consists of 64 dishes, which can see an area of the sky 50 times bigger than the GBT can view at once,” explained Breakthrough Listen Principal Investigator Dr Andrew Siemion. “Such a large field of view typically contains many stars that are interesting technosignature targets. Our new supercomputer enables us to combine signals from the 64 dishes to get high resolution scans of these targets with excellent sensitivity, all without impacting the research of other astronomers who are using the array.”

By operating in this “commensal” mode, Breakthrough Listen gains access to one of the world’s most capable and sensitive radio telescopes almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The ability to scan 64 targets at a time within the main field of view also improves Listen’s ability to reject interfering signals from human technology such as Earth-orbiting satellites.

The Listen team had to develop sophisticated targeting and scheduling software to ensure the survey goals could be met in the desired timeframe. They have also developed an automated data processing pipeline that scans through the data in near-real-time to search for interesting signals.

Breakthrough Listen is also working with SARAO to develop research opportunities for astronomers and data processing experts in Africa on this cutting-edge programme.

“MeerKAT has a remarkable combination of sensitivity and survey speed, which makes it a wonderful telescope for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI),” said Dr Fernando Camilo, Chief Scientist for SARAO.

“The telescope was planned and developed here in South Africa, and it’s very exciting that young South Africans will have the chance to be involved at the forefront of the search for life beyond Earth.”

Related paper: The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: MeerKAT Target Selection