A new technique is a dramatic breakthrough in the search for alien life, astronomers say. Researchers at the Breakthrough Listen project based at the University of California, Berkeley say they have developed a new way to be sure that any potential signal is really coming from space – and not from something more boring. Astronomers spend vast amounts of time looking for radio signals that might have come from alien civilisations as part of work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. But they have in the past been fooled by very human technology, such as cellphones, microwaves and car engines, that can produce a blast of radio signals that look as if they have come from distant worlds. One way to check whether signals are really alien is to point the telescope elsewhere and then repeatedly return to the same spot, with the hope of seeing the signal again and ensuring that it is not a false alarm. But that is not foolproof – and only works if the signal sticks around. Some of the most promising radio signals might only be detectable once. The so-called “Wow!” signal, for instance – a radio signal detected in 1977 that was so shocking the astronomer who found it wrote the exclamation on a printout – has not been detected since, and astronomers still do not know whether it was an alien message or just a mistake. Now scientists have devised a new test that can be used to see whether a signal has really passed through interstellar space, which should help show that it is not from elsewhere on Earth. It works by looking for “scintillation” – the changes in amplitude of a signal as it is affected by the cold plasma of space. “The first ET detection may very well be a one-off, where we only see one signal. And if a signal doesn’t repeat, there’s not a lot that we can say about that. And obviously, the most likely explanation for it is radio frequency interference, as is the most likely explanation for the Wow! signal,” said Andrew Siemion, principal investigator for Breakthrough Listen and director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, which operates the world’s longest running SETI program. “Having this new technique and the instrumentation capable of recording data at sufficient fidelity such that you could see the effect of the interstellar medium, or ISM, is incredibly powerful.” Dr Siemion called the breakthrough “one of the biggest advances in radio SETI in a long time” and said that it would be the first time researchers would be able to differentiate a real signal from a false alarm, even if it was only detected once. The technique can only be used for signals that have travelled 10,000 light years or more to Earth, researchers note. If it was closer to us, the scintillation effect cannot be seen because they are not travelling through enough of the interstellar medium, or ISM. The research is described in a new paper, ‘On Detecting Interstellar Scintillation in Narrowband Radio SETI’, published in The Astrophysical Journal. Read More Battery breakthroughs are about to trigger a transport revolution Huge asteroid nearly crashes into Earth – and is only spotted days later ChatGPT rival with ‘no ethical boundaries’ sold on dark web

Get your wallets ready for Amazon Prime Day 2023. From July 11 to July 12,

Kevin O'Leary trolled as he asks 'What am I cooking?' while sharing vintage Mr Wonderful picture

As Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison on Tuesday, Amanda Seyfried shared her thoughts on the disgraced Theranos founder's sentence.

BREA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 5, 2023--

Singapore’s approach to crypto became more conservative after the collapse of FTX but the island remains crypto friendly

The HP Z2 G9 desktop workstation packs a serious punch, but the Z4 G5 under

The non-fungible token (NFT) craze might be over – but we will always have videos of celebrities endorsing them as reminders of just how unhinged it was. The latest to have re-emerged is of Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon, the US late-night talk show host, and it is quite something. Fallon’s interview with Hilton is from 2022, just before the crypto bubble burst in spectacular fashion last year. It starts with Fallon pulling out a picture of a low-quality cartoon ape, saying: “This is your ape!” "I was going through a lot of them," Hilton said. "I was like, I want something that, like, kind of reminds me of me. But – this one, it does." After a short segment of grindingly awkward conversation, Fallon then pulls out another picture of an ape – his own NFT. Turns out he also wanted something that reminded him of himself. “It reminded me of me a little bit,” he said. He then put the pictures side by side and said, "They're buddies.” Journalist Nooruddean Choudry reposted the clip on X/Twitter, saying: “Still, I’m sure everyone involved in this beyond weird advert to make rich people richer at the expense of gullible idiots is proud of their contribution.” It comes after a report indicated that the NFT market has collapsed and that nearly all NFTs are practically worthless. The study of 73,257 NFT collections found that 69,795 of which have a market value of zero Ether, a popular cryptocurrency used to buy and sell the tokens. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

By Stephen Nellis and Samrhitha A (Reuters) -Chipmaker Intel said on Tuesday it plans to operate its programmable chip unit

It’s just a month into summer and Britain has been hit by water shortages. Earlier-than-usual hot weather has

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 12, 2023--

IRVING, Texas, & TAIPEI, Taiwan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 5, 2023--