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The Search for Advanced Civilizations is Going Real-Time
Modern telescopes like the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) are watching the sky for any changes, and can report a million variations in a single night. This will multiply when Vera Rubin comes online. SETI researchers are looking for specific events that could be caused by an intelligent civilization, and have developed methods to search through astronomical alerts automatically. This could give SETI researchers dozens of potential targets a night to follow up on, scanning for signals or anomalous changes in brightness.
While these systems were built to catch explosive events like supernovae and track asteroids, a new paper by researchers Eleanor Gallay, James Davenport, and Steve Croft demonstrates their untapped potential for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). The SETI Ellipsoid is a particularly clever concept that identifies the zone in space where hypothetical alien observers would have seen Earth transit across the Sun, potentially prompting them to send signals in our direction. Though the SETI methods that alert brokers can execute are currently limited, they provide suggestions that may enhance future technosignature and anomaly searches in the era of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
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