- Space.com
VIVA – Scientists have detected eight extraterrestrial or alien signals using a new machine-learning algorithm. Although further research has yielded only silence, researchers say the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is a promising way to search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
“I am impressed by how well this approach has performed on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” study co-author, also an astronomer at the University of Toronto, Cherry Ng said in a statement.
The new technique uses what study lead author Peter Ma, an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, calls "semi-unsupervised learning." Machine learning can be supervised, using data labeled by humans in a way that makes it easier for the algorithm to make predictions, or unsupervised, by picking patterns out of large data sets entirely without direction.
The semi-unsupervised method combines both. The researchers first trained the algorithm to tell the difference between human-caused signals that come from radio waves originating on Earth and radio signals that come from elsewhere.
Alien.
- The Guardian
The researchers tested different algorithms to minimize false positives. They analyzed 150 terabytes of data from the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, covering observations of 820 stars near Earth. Then, they discovered eight previously overlooked signals from five stars located between 30 light-years and 90 light-years from Earth, as quoted from Live Science.
Then they discovered eight previously overlooked signals from five stars located between 30 light years and 90 light years from Earth. Scientists with Breakthrough Listen, a major SETI effort, say that these signals share two features with signals that might be made by intelligent aliens.
“First, they are present when we look at the star and absent when we look away as opposed to local interference, which is generally always present,” Steve Croft, project scientist for Breakthrough Listen at the Green Bank Telescope, said in the statement.
Meanwhile, according to Ma, these features could have appeared by chance. Before making claims about distant alien life, researchers need to observe the same signals repeatedly. Follow-up observations at the Green Bank Telescope found no sign of any signals.
The research team hopes to apply their algorithm to data from powerful radio telescopes, such as MeerKAT in South Africa or the planned Next Generation Very Large Array, which will be distributed across North America.
"With our new technique, combined with next-generation telescopes, we hope machine learning can take us from searching for hundreds of stars to millions," Ma said.
