SETI-Institute: No trace of aliens at interstellar comets 3I/ATLAS

An extensive analysis with a radio telescope network has not found any reference to extraterrestrial technology in the 3I/ATLAS interstellar comet. The SETI Institute has now made this public, whose Allen Telescope Array was used for the investigation. Thus, the celestial body was searched for so-called technosignatures on a wide frequency range from 1 to 9 GHz. In total, after over seven hours from 74 million signals, about 200 candidates have been found for possibly interesting, which were tested manually. But everyone could be traced back to technology of people, a possible trace of aliens was not there.

No surprise, yet important

There was no doubt that 3I/ATLAS is natural. Nevertheless, the analysis has brought forward research. So you can now better estimate how realistic it is with our technology to find extraterrestrial technology on an object like 3I/ATLAS if there were these, the team says. After the investigation, it can now be ruled out that the comet sends a signal which is more than 10 to 100 watts in the investigated frequencies. This corresponds to the power of a household appliance, assigns the group. At the same time, we have shown how fast the research community can be: The observations would have started less than a day after the discovery of the object.

Video by heise

3I/ATLAS was discovered in Chile at the beginning of July last year with the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), therefore its name. The interstellar comet is only the third visitor in our solar system that was discovered during the flight. During his flight he was extensively examined, the analysis of the SETI Institute, now published in The Astronomical Journal, is just one of many. The astronom Avi Loeb of the Harvard University claimed that the object is not a natural one, but that it has always been noticed with such unscientific assessments.

(mho)