He SETI Institute announced that extensive radio scans made with his telescope in northern California They found no signs of otherworldly technology from our system’s most recent interstellar visitor.
The object identified as 3I/ATLAS It was discovered last summer while passing through our corner of the cosmos. Scientists quickly identified it as a comet that migrated from another star, although some insisted without evidence that it could be related to intelligent life.
It’s just him third known object from a distant star –all considered of pure origin– that ventures into the territory of the Sun.
An interstellar comet under the magnifying glass of NASA and SETI
Several NASA probes observed the celestial ice ball as it passed near Mars last October, approaching within about 30 million kilometers of the red planet. Its closest proximity to Earth occurred in December, about 269 million kilometers away.
SETI conducted more than seven hours of observations in July, shortly after the comet’s discovery, analyzing a wide range of radio signals. The team identified nearly 74 million narrowband signals.
After ruling out human interference and signals that coincided with the object’s movement, just over 200 signals remained, all of which “corresponded to technology on the Earth’s surface or in our own satellites in Earth orbit,” according to SETI.
The results were published in The Indispensable Journal.
Why searching for technosignatures is still relevant
These results “demonstrate how feasible it is to detect a signal with the technology we have today,” co-author Valeria García López of Furman University said in a statement. “That is why it is important keep looking for technosignatureseven in objects from which we would not expect to receive signals.”
SETI’s Sofia Sheikh, lead author of the study, and her team noted that NASA’s Voyager probes will one day become extraterrestrial objects in neighboring star systems. Launched in the 1970s, the two probes are the furthest ships from Earth, drifting in interstellar space.
“Voyager and similar probes will eventually become interstellar objects in other star systems. Therefore, we know that no extrapolation is needed for the view of interstellar technological objects, since we have proof of their existence,” they wrote.
An ancient traveler who will not return
Almost 1.3 billion kilometers away on his return trip to interstellar space – from which he will never return –, The comet has an estimated size of between 440 meters and 5.6 kilometers. Scientists believe it could be up to 11 billion years old, twice as old as the Sun.
FEW (AP, SETI, The Indispensable Journal)
