Scientist states that artificial intelligence will assist in the search for extraterrestrial life

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to become a fundamental tool in the search for life outside of Earth in the coming years. This prediction was made by Jill Tarter, founder of the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on investigating signals from alien civilizations.

During her participation in the Rio Innovation Week event, held this Tuesday (4th), the scientist mentioned that the institute's new generation of telescopes is already being adapted to operate with AI-based systems. These systems will have the capacity to automatically determine where the equipment should be directed and what data should be collected, following the latest scientific discoveries.

According to Tarter, general artificial intelligence (AGI) will also play a crucial role in processing the vast volume of information captured by radio telescopes. She stated: 'We are replacing the first agent telescope, so that pointing and data collection will be decided by a machine and assisted by the most recent information, according to our understanding of what science is doing.'

Challenges of the Research

Tarter emphasized that the main difficulty in the search is not merely technological. She pointed out that scientists still do not precisely know what types of signals should be sought or how an extraterrestrial civilization could establish communication. To illustrate this obstacle, she compared the search for alien intelligence to the efforts made to understand the language of dolphins, primates, and birds here on Earth.

Additionally, the immense scale of the Milky Way greatly complicates the work. According to her, to investigate a larger portion of ten or one hundred million stars in the Milky Way, it will be necessary to rely not only on more powerful telescopes but also on much more robust transmitters than those currently existing on the planet. Thus, technological evolution will be decisive in expanding this investigative capacity.

During the lecture, Tarter made a distinction between the scientific research conducted by the SETI Institute and reports related to UFOs (unidentified flying objects). She argued that such occurrences must be examined with skeptical rigor and detailed investigation, prioritizing physical and statistical explanations before any extraordinary conclusion.

Personal Journey

The astronomer also shared the adversities she faced at the beginning of her career because she was a woman. She reported losing a scholarship after getting married and studying engineering at a time when women represented a minority in universities. In 1965, less than 23% of students at Cornell University were women, and in the engineering faculty, female representation was less than 1%, including herself.

However, she observed a significant change in this landscape. Currently, Tarter stated, more than half of the students at Cornell University (USA) are women, a percentage that is also reached at the institution's School of Engineering.

olhardigital.com.brJuly 24, 18:03

Study suggests that the search for extraterrestrial life should expand its focus to higher radio frequencies

The search for intelligent life beyond Earth may be failing by focusing only on a small portion of the radio spectrum. A new investigation points out that higher frequencies may offer a new opportunity to detect technological transmissions.

Expansion of the SETI search scope

The research used data obtained from the ALMA telescope, located in Chile, and did not detect any artificial signals. However, the findings demonstrate that the investigation of technosignals needs to go beyond the areas usually studied by SETI.

Historically, much of the SETI research has concentrated on the band known as the 'water hole,' situated between 1.42 and 1.66 GHz. This range received attention due to its location between the natural frequencies emitted by hydrogen and the hydroxyl radical, components linked to water formation. The theory suggests that an advanced civilization might consider this interval a strategic point for communication.

New research approaches

In this context, astronomer Louisa Mason, a doctoral researcher at the University of Manchester, chose to examine a little-explored area: millimeter and submillimeter radio frequencies. For years, SETI searches were limited to a restricted section of the radio spectrum, raising the question of what would happen if one looked at a significantly different location.

Mason analyzed ALMA archives, which were initially collected for other scientific purposes, instead of conducting new observations. She searched for narrow radio signals that could suggest a technological origin but found no candidates that exceeded the limits established in the study. Nevertheless, the work showed that telescopes used in other areas of astronomy can be useful in the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Potential of secondary data

The study also highlighted the importance of stars that incidentally appear in telescope images. Such secondary targets have the potential to considerably deepen the analyses. The benefits pointed out include: astronomical observations covering stars beyond the primary target; the use of galactic models to locate difficult-to-catalog stars; the expansion of search possibilities through new frequencies; and the capacity of archived data to reveal unforeseen information.

Review of stellar count

To refine the estimate of the number of stars present in the observations, Mason applied the Besançon Galactic Model, a tool designed to estimate stellar populations that are outside conventional catalogs. In a previous survey involving 1,327 telescope observations, this method raised the estimate of examined stars from about 288 thousand, as identified by the Gaia catalog, to over 6.1 million.