A 21-year search for extraterrestrial alien life ended last week, but scientists are still positive about finding life beyond earth.
SETI@Home, which recruited alien-searching computing power from the public for 21 years, was wrapped up after analysing ‘all the data’ they needed
But projects like Breakthrough Listen, a decade-long, hundred million dollar search for signs of extraterrestrial life using the world’s most powerful telescopes, leave researchers optimistic.
In an interview with The Conversation, project scientist for Breakthrough Listen’s Parkes telescope Danny Price, said scientists are still trying to look ‘through as much of the frequency spectrum as we can with as many telescopes as we can.’
He said: ‘As technology keeps on getting more and more sensitive, the number of stars and the quality of the data we can get also gets better.’
‘There’s a small chance we’ll find something. I think this is a long term human endeavor.’
Though hope is still high for a discovery using Breakthrough Listen, some scientists think it might be the last chance.
John Sarkissian, an operations scientist at the CSIRO Parkes Radio, said: ‘If there’s anything to be found, this project will find it, but if we don’t it’s probably because there isn’t anything nearby to find.’
Other senior astronomers associated with the Breakthrough Listen were also optimistic that life existed in the universe.
In the wider field of astrophysics, voices that think extraterrestrial life is unlikely are small: from Stephen Hawking to Albert Einstein, many think it improbable for extraterrestrial life not to exist, given the number of planets.
Given that some scientists think we are living in a ‘golden age of astrophysics’, the anticipation at finding an alien life form is high.
In an interview with Metro.co.uk in January, 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics winner said that finding alien life was at the forefront of his mind.
‘I would rather spend all the money right now to detect planets more like the solar system and trying to search for life, than trying to find planets in other galaxies,’ Queloz told Metro.co.uk.
But scientists conducting the search for extraterrestrial life are under no illusion to the enormity of their task.
‘We think that life is rare,’ said Breakthrough Listen astronomer Price.
‘We don’t think that there’s aliens out there everywhere who are trying to contact us with really, really bright signals, we think it’s gonna be a hard and arduous process.’
If a signal that looks to be from an extraterrestrial civilisation is found, the announcement wouldn’t be instant.
‘We want to make sure that it’s a bona fide signal,’ said Price.
‘We will probably pick up the phone and call some other telescopes and get them to look and confirm that what we found seems to be there.’
The Breakthrough Listen project recently released nearly two petabytes of data from their comprehensive survey of radio emissions from the Milky Way galaxy.
The most comprehensive SETI search to date, the search will cover 10 times more sky, 5 times more radio spectrum and work 100 times faster than any previous program.
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