Scientists use Allen Telescope Array to search for radio signals in the TRAPPIST-1 star system

https://phys.org/news/2024-10-scientists-allen-telescope-array-radio.html

3 Comments

  1. TheStormIsComming on

    They might find the colony from the TV series *The Ark*.

    Hoping for season 3. 🍿

  2. PrinceEntrapto on

    TRAPPIST-1 is approximately 40ly away from Earth, it’s my understanding that even the most extreme high-power narrowband terrestrial radio signals would only be detectable within a range of up to 10ly away, and at the end of that range only with a receiver network as capable as the Square Kilometre Array

    Some of the most powerful non-narrowband radio signals we can generate with our current <5MW transmitters are pretty much decayed at a distance of ‘just’ 2ly out, by the time those signals reached TRAPPIST-1 they would be ~400x fainter than they would be at the point of becoming indistinguishable from background noise from most receivers

    Even a highly narrowband signal like the Arecibo Message would still suffer significant information loss over that distance, and appreciate it as an effort at communicating would depend on the listeners also having some pretty capable receiver arrays

    In other words, I don’t find this negative result – along with most negative results – remotely discouraging, all it really demonstrates is that potential ETI wasn’t attempting to ping us using gigawatt transmitters carrying strongly narrowband messaging 

  3. Opposite-Chemistry-0 on

    Its great that the system is under inspection. Interesting one. Tabby’s star If ofc another. Still no published paper on jwst images taken last year summer