Alien hunters reckon they have failed to make radio contact with ET because they have been tuned into the wrong channel.
They think they may have been missing out extraterrestrial messages because they have been scouring too high frequencies. Now they plan to focus on lower radio frequencies in the hope they will finally make contact.
Astrophysicist Owen Johnson, from Trinity College Dublin, said previous attempts had only used higher frequencies despite everyday services such as air traffic control, marine emergency broadcasting and FM radio stations using low-frequency radiation on Earth.
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Researchers in two teams based in Ireland and Sweden are now scanning lower frequencies. If both pick up the same signal then it suggests it comes from outside Earth.
"I have no doubt that many wondrous things will be found," Owen told research website The Conversation. "And if we’re lucky we may reap the biggest reward of all – some company in the cosmos."
He said the question "is there life beyond Earth" had become "one of the hardest to answer in science."
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"Despite the seemingly boundless expanse of the universe which implies there’s potential for abundant life the vast distances between stars render the search akin to locating a needle in a cosmic haystack," he said.
He said the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence – aka Seti – was dedicated to finding aliens by searching for unusual signals dubbed technosignatures. But 60 years of searches have so far come up short.
Owen said he hoped to change that by investigating a previously unexplored range of frequencies. Previous technosignature searches included only the band of radio frequencies above 600 MHz leaving lower ones "virtually unexplored."
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That is because lower radio waves have less energy making them harder to detect. Telescopes that operate at these frequencies have only recently been developed.
Owen’s team used two of the world’s most sensitive low-frequency telescopes operating at 110 and 190 MHz – to study 44 planets orbiting stars than the Sun identified by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.
The telescopes are so sensitive they could detect a phone call halfway across the Solar System. That made sifting through data for ET messages difficult.
So far he has found zero signals he believes hail from aliens. But he added: "We have only just started – and there are likely to be an enormous number of Earth-like planets out there."
"We’re only at the start of a long journey."
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