US EditionHow ‘Space Weather’ May Cause Alien Signals to Get Lost in Space
Stellar plasma and winds can broaden narrow radio signals by 10–100 Hz, reducing detection sensitivity in current SETI searches, especially around M-dwarf stars, researchers say.
- Researchers from the SETI Institute published a new study finding stellar activity and plasma turbulence near planets can broaden ultra-narrow signals, and even perfect transmissions may not stay narrow.
- Plasma fluctuations near stars can distort and 'smear' radio waves, as the team calibrated broadening using solar-system probe data and applied it to stellar winds and coronal mass ejections.
- Because many surveys scan for razor-thin tones, SETI experiments may miss broader signals from M-dwarf stars, which are about 75% of stars in the Milky Way, as Dr. Vishal Gajjar explained.
- The team recommends revising target selection because the researchers say the findings point to strong implications for search design, urging pipelines to stay sensitive to broadened signals that may slip below detection thresholds.
- The research offers a framework that estimates broadening for different star types and frequencies, showing signals may arrive broader and fainter, which may explain missing transmissions in techno-signature searches.
23 Articles
23 Articles
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A research by the Institute Seti funded by the Nasa: "The radio signals transmitted by the cosmos disturbed by the storms in space." If E.T. calls home and no one answers is the fault of the "maltempo..."
Space weather near stars may be hiding alien signals from Earth
Radio silence has long puzzled those searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, but the answer might lie much closer to the source of potential signals than previously thought. Conditions around other stars could be scrambling even intentionally narrow radio transmissions, making them nearly invisible by the time they reach Earth. Even a perfectly precise signal sent by an advanced civilization could arrive as a smeared, diluted trace if its o…
"Space weather" could distort radio waves, so that they have not been perceived so far. Now new search strategies are to come.
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