Breakthrough Listen: video gaming modernized search of aliens

Iconic Australian telescope began a serious search for extraterrestrial civilizations. It uses well-known and conventional technology to determine the location of the signal. The Parkes radio telescope located in New South Wales in Australia, witnessed the birth and death of star systems, solved the mysteries of space and even gave the first live television pictures of the astronauts on the moon. Now he has a new mission.

The walls of the control center in the form of a donut under the giant 64-metre dish is decorated with racks of equipment. Whole cabinets of flashing LEDs, switches, dials, stacks of processors and hard drives. Since the first observations in 1961 the technology is constantly updated. At least most of it.

"we Recently upgraded the computer," says responsible for the operations of the telescope John Sarkissian from the Australian national science Agency CSIRO (the State Association scientific and applied research). "Put a sticker of Apple on it."

This computer is used for manoeuvring the Parkes dish with high precision to detect radio signals from distant galaxies. But this PDP 11 production DEC was created long before appeared in any modern Mac.

"he has no operating system, so it is not freezing," says Sargsyan. "It is very stable and reliable — we try not to fix what isn't broken".

This beige box with three switches worked without incident since 1982. And soon it will operate in conjunction with the latest generation processing technologies.

"And here we have four shielded racks," says Sargsyan, moving to the opposite end of the circular room. He opens one of the doors metal wardrobe and splash the icy air. "There are so many equipment that if we do not let it cool quickly, it will be hot".

Technology that produces as much heat as is used for the new major of the search for extraterrestrial life — Breakthrough Listen. This global project, which includes radio telescopes around the world, supported . From the beginning of 2017, the detected possible alien signals from space will occupy a quarter of the time of observation of the parks.

"It's a fresh perspective on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence with the help of new technologies and new motivation to become better," explains the Director of the program in CSIRO John Reynolds.

"Computers are becoming more powerful every year," says Reynolds. "We use technologies that are based on GPU — this technology allows gamers to enjoy the gameplay. It quickly displays images on the screens and made a revolution in the field of computer processing".

Ideally, an alien race will send signals maculate or anyone in the cosmos who can listen to her. But if they're different from us, a more likely scenario would be that they accidentally betray their presence. And to understand the transmission, need new equipment.

"If you are looking for a signal from a distant planet, which was not intended to receive, then you should look for signals such as those that are visible from Earth," says Reynolds. "For example, the GPS signal is a complex signal, which POPs up a simple display and requires a lot of handling."

In Addition to computers, the dish Parkes modernizarea new set of 13 receivers — they will enable the radio telescope to look in 13 different directions at once.

"the Amount of data that we will receive, will be phenomenal," says Sargsyan. "Every day we will collect many terabytes of data".

In Addition to searching for possible earth-type planets near the closest star, scientists point a telescope at a distant galaxy. Which are hundreds of light years.

"you Need to be incredibly advanced civilization to pass something at such a distance," says Reynolds. "But that's what we're looking for — most likely, any detection will come from a civilization that much more advanced than we are."

The Chances of getting an unexpected signal of alien origin is graded on a scale of Rio, and for many years had a lot of false positives. Many, however, was important from a scientific point of view.

In 1967, for example, the Cambridge radio astronomer Jocelyn bell-Burnell discovered a regularly pulsating signal from a distant star system. Originally it was called LGM ("Little green men"), but then identified as a new type of neutron star — a pulsar. As you rotate these dead stars emit a repetitive beam of electromagnetic radiation into space.

Some signals, however, is a fraud. "WTF — another acronym for them," says Reynolds. One such signal was caught by Parkes a few years ago, when astronomers noticed the signal peaks in the graphs of their data. These anomalies seemed evident at every lunchtime. "It is quite obvious that we should look for terrestrial signals, although they certainly resembled the desired celestial signals."

These mysterious signals, as it turned out, came from microwave ovens, which were used by the workers of the telescope. "We think we have the tools and understanding of how to separate the fake from reality — just need to be very careful." The microwave has since banned.

If after checking a signal of some sort seems alien, Breakthrough Listen conducts the procedure to make sure that the news will go around the world hurl. "You need to be careful not jumping in too early and not to declare something that is false," says Reynolds. "We will take great care to make sure that all of the carefully checked and is high on the scale of Rio."

What are the chances this project will succeed where others have left with nothing?

"One of the main problems associated with this kind of events is the low probability of success," admits Reynolds. "There is no doubt that we are not alone in the Universe. If you look hard enough, we will find. The only question is when."