Turkish student proposes new method for detecting extraterrestrial civilizations

A Turkish high school student has developed an innovative approach to the search for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. Instead of focusing exclusively on the heat emitted by large space structures, he suggests monitoring stars that exhibit atypical rotation patterns.

Concept of 'Stellar J Harvesting'

Sahin Torlakcik's research introduces a concept called 'stellar J harvesting.' This method is based on the idea of extracting energy from a star's movement to identify traces left by a potentially highly developed civilization.

The detection of technosignatures—marks left by the technologies of intelligent beings—constitutes a notable challenge in astronomy, given that civilizations far more advanced than humans may employ unimaginable energy generation methods today. A known example is the Dyson sphere, a theoretical megastructure designed to capture stellar energy, whose residual heat production has been sought for decades without confirmed success.

Advantages of the New Approach

Torlakcik proposes an alternative path: investigating stars that might have lost some of their rotational speed due to technological intervention. The concept of 'stellar J harvesting' implies removing the angular momentum of a star, a physical property related to its rotation. According to the researcher, this method offers several advantages:

It would require less material compared to a Dyson sphere;
It would generate significantly less residual heat;
It could avoid conventional searches conducted in the infrared spectrum;
It would create its own signals capable of analysis by telescopes.

Energy Extraction Mechanisms

The proposal is not limited to installing a brake on a star. It presupposes gigantic structures capable of interacting with magnetic fields and charged particles. One possibility raised is a conductive structure inserted into the solar wind, utilizing Alfvén waves—oscillations in magnetic fields—to transfer part of the stellar movement to the equipment. Another alternative would be a vast orbital ring positioned at the approximate distance between Earth and the Sun, which would use the Lorentz force, an interaction between magnetic fields and charged particles, to capture rotational energy. Finally, the study points to a third option: a synchrotron radiation deceleration matrix, capable of emitting signals in radio waves or X-rays that could indicate its presence. This concept relates to 'starlifting,' another idea of a technosignature where an advanced civilization would remove matter from a star to build structures or modify its evolution, unlike stellar J harvesting, which focuses on the celestial body's movement.

Analysis of Candidate Stars

To validate his hypothesis, Torlakcik examined data from stars collected by the Kepler mission. After applying filters to discard natural explanations, he identified a set of 6,725 Sun-like stars. Two of them stood out: KIC 67606183 and KIC 9834255. Both are classified as G-type stars and show a considerably slower rotation rate than expected. While similar stars usually complete an orbit in five to ten days, these two take about 61 and 65 days, respectively.

It is important to note that the student did not conclude that he found an alien megastructure, as the discrepancy could have natural causes, such as the presence of an unknown companion star or variations in the chemical composition of the celestial body. Although the research does not confirm the existence of intelligent life outside Earth, it establishes a new method for searching for clues in the universe, noting the fact that the author is a high school student involved in this cosmic investigation.

olhardigital.com.brJuly 27, 24:23

Study suggests astronomers may have overlooked extraterrestrial signals by focusing on limited frequencies

The search for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations may have failed to capture potential transmissions due to the concentration of efforts in a restricted area of the radio spectrum. A new investigation points out that higher frequencies, which have been little investigated so far, offer a new chance to identify technological signals of alien origin.

Presentation of the Research

This study was presented during the National Astronomy Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, held in Birmingham, United Kingdom. The research was conducted by Louisa Mason, a doctoral student at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. She used data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope, located in Chile, to conduct the first analysis of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program.

Traditional Focus and New Perspectives

Historically, most SETI research has focused on frequencies between 1.42 and 1.66 gigahertz (GHz). This range is known as the 'water hole' because it lies between the natural frequencies emitted by hydrogen and hydroxyl, components of water. Scientists considered this relatively quiet zone a probable location for interstellar communications, given that advanced civilizations might recognize the importance of these elements.

However, the new study argues that higher frequencies also deserve attention in the hunt for technosignatures—signals generated by technology and not by natural cosmic processes.

ALMA Data Analysis

Instead of conducting new observations, Mason examined pre-existing ALMA data, originally collected for other astronomical purposes. The purpose was to detect narrow-band radio signals, seen as potential indicators of technology, distinguishing them from natural astrophysical phenomena. Mason stated that for decades, SETI has focused on a small portion of the radio spectrum, and questioned what would happen if they looked somewhere very different.

She added that virtually nothing has yet been explored from the millimeter and submillimeter radio bands for SETI, which represents the opening of a new parameter area for the search. Although she analyzed two small frequency windows from ALMA Band 3 observations, no candidate technological signature was found above the limits defined in the study. However, she emphasizes that this survey proves that telescopes capable of observing higher frequencies are crucial for future searches for alien intelligence.

Broader Stellar Estimation

Beyond the search for signals, the study revealed an underexplored opportunity in astronomy. When a radio telescope is pointed at a specific target, it also records numerous other stars in its field of view. Typically, researchers use catalogs such as Gaia, from the European Space Agency (ESA), to estimate this stellar population.

Mason employed a distinct methodology, using the Besançon Galactic Model to calculate the entire stellar population present in each observation, including very distant, dim, or difficult-to-identify stars in existing catalogs. By applying this technique to a previous SETI survey, which contained 1,327 telescope pointing observations, the star count increased from about 288 thousand (identified by Gaia) to over 6.1 million, thanks to the galactic model. According to Mason, this offers a much more precise perspective on the extent of the galaxy already examined in the search for technosignatures. She commented that one of the most exciting aspects of the work is realizing that they searched many more stars than initially imagined.

She concluded that even a small observation can contain a large number and diversity of stars that might never have been considered for study. Combining high-frequency observations with galactic simulations allows for a better understanding of what has already been searched and where to look next.

Implications of Non-Detection

The researcher emphasizes that the absence of any signal does not imply that intelligent life does not exist elsewhere in the Universe. For her, the result only indicates that no technosignature was found in the few frequency bands analyzed in this study. It is expected that the work will stimulate future SETI research to explore a larger slice of the radio spectrum and make greater use of the vast volumes of astronomical data already available. The study was conducted in collaboration with Michael Garrett, Andrew Siemion, and Kelvin Wandia.