On April 28, the reporter learned from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences that the 500-meter-diameter spherical radio telescope (FAST), known as China’s “Eye of the Sky”, officially opened the Extraterrestrial Civilization Search (SETI) to find signals from highly intelligent life deep in the universe . The discovery of more and more extraterrestrial planets, coupled with the revolutionary advancement of instruments and observation capabilities, has led to the renaissance of the search for extraterrestrial civilizations. In the future, FAST will inevitably become the main force in the search and research of extraterrestrial civilizations.
Extraterrestrial civilization search is one of the five scientific goals of the 500-meter-diameter spherical radio telescope. In September 2018, researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory, the University of California, Berkeley and Beijing Normal University and other units conducted an installation test on the high-resolution extraterrestrial civilization search back-end at the FAST site. In July 2019, the researchers further analyzed and processed the obtained drift scan data to achieve a frequency resolution of 4 hertz (Hz), and successfully removed most of the radio frequency interference (RFI), screening out multiple sets of narrowband candidate signals.
FAST Chief Scientist Li Guo, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, organized the cooperation group of FAST and Breakthrough Listen and then published a quantitative outlook on the FAST extraterrestrial civilization search survey. Based on the test observations of the super-Earth GJ 273 b and the calculation of the isotropic equivalent power (EIRP) of extraterrestrial civilizations, FAST has the potential to detect thousands of extraterrestrials to be announced by the terrestrial extraterrestrial planetary survey satellite (TESS). Terrestrial civilizations on the planet, and the second kind of Kardashov or more advanced technological civilizations in the nearby fairy galaxy. Promoting the FAST extraterrestrial civilization search survey can reach an unprecedented depth and expand human understanding of its own position in the universe.
The above results were published in the American Journal of Astrophysics (ApJ) and the Chinese Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics (RAA). They describe the special back-end of FAST extraterrestrial civilization search and look forward to the prospect of searching extraterrestrial civilization. “This is FAST’s first extraterrestrial civilization search research result, which laid a solid foundation for us to start the extraterrestrial civilization search.” Li Xun said.