This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is mostly concerned with where to look for technosignatures from another civilization. Between 2012 and 2015, SETI's Project Phoenix targeted about 1,000 sun-like stars for signs of intelligent life.
But where to look might not be as important as when to look, according to scientists at SETI. In a new paper, scientists outline the effort to search for signals not only in the right place, but at the right time. The paper is "A Technosignature Survey Of The Anti-Solar Point: The SETI Institute's Largest-Ever Campaign With The Allen Telescope Array," and it was presented at the 77th International Astronautical Congress.
The authors are Isabel Gerrard and Sofia Z. Gerrard is the technosignature researcher with Breakthrough Listen at the University of Oxford, and Sheikh is a SETI Institute research scientist. The work is also published on the arXiv preprint server.
The new search effort doesn't do away with the "where" aspect of the search. Since life exists around stars, this search is still focused on stars, or rather the planets that orbit them. But it's different this time.
This time it involves a point that changes over time, called the antisolar point. It's the point in space-time that's directly opposite the sun from the perspective of an observer. Imagine a line extending from the sun, through an observer on Earth, and out the other side.
It's not fixed in place; it's an abstract point defined by changing coordinates that shifts as the Earth orbits the sun. This new SETI effort is also inspired by game theory. Game theory is a way of anticipating another player's moves in a game, when their moves are also based on their anticipations of your next move.
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