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Next-Generation Sensitive Radio Telescope Array to Launch in Nevada Desert

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A remote region in the Nevada desert within the Great Basin is set to host the world’s most advanced radio telescope array.

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The California Institute of Technology is spearheading the project and announced its intention to initiate construction of the telescope after securing adequate funding. This project, known as the Deep Synoptic Array, consists of 1,650 individual radio antennas that will collectively study supermassive black holes, pulsars, and fast radio bursts — brief, powerful emissions of radio waves that often originate in deep space.

Greg Hallinan, an astronomy professor at Caltech and the principal investigator for the Deep Synoptic Array, commented, “The vast number of antennas distinguishes this telescope from any existing ones.”

Radio telescopes capture naturally occurring radio waves emitted by various celestial bodies, enabling astronomers to analyze these signals for insights into their structure, composition, and temperature.

While radio telescopes do not capture images like optical observatories, they can convert radio signals into data for imaging.

Hallinan stated that the Deep Synoptic Array will surpass all previous ground-based radio telescopes in performance, observing the sky 100 times faster while producing exceptionally high-quality radio images.

Regarding radio-emitting cosmic objects, he remarked, “Collectively, all telescopes built over the last century have identified approximately 20 million radio sources in the universe. This telescope will double that in just the first 24 hours.”

Each dish in this project is designed to measure about 20 feet in diameter. Together, they will form one of the largest radio telescope arrays ever constructed, covering over 123 square miles managed by the Bureau of Land Management in White Pine County, Nevada.

Hallinan indicated that the project is currently in the permitting phase, aiming to start construction next year and complete it by 2029.

For ground-based radio astronomy, two types of telescopes are commonly utilized: the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, which boasts a diameter of 328 feet, and the extensive array of small dishes like the Very Large Array in New Mexico, featuring 27 dishes arranged in a Y-shape.

Single-dish telescopes are generally more sensitive and capable of detecting faint radio waves from deep space, while large arrays of multiple dishes tend to yield clearer images. Hallinan noted that deep synoptic arrays have the potential to achieve both.

Members of the Caltech Deep Synoptic Array Team.
Katie Jameson / California Institute of Technology / DSA Project

The Deep Synoptic Array is engineered to detect radio emissions from millions of stars, galaxies, and additional celestial entities emitting radio light.

“Radio astronomy is transforming from sketches to high-resolution imagery,” said Vikram Ravi, Caltech astronomy professor and co-principal investigator of the Deep Synoptic Array, as stated in a recent announcement. “The DSA will scan a significantly larger celestial area more frequently than any other telescope.”

Researchers plan to utilize the array for at least five sky surveys, seeking captivating radio emission pulses for additional study.

“We will pinpoint the exact location of any detected radio source, enabling optical, infrared, and X-ray observatories to target that area for further exploration,” Hallinan explained.

Funding for the initiative has been provided by Schmidt Science, a philanthropic organization established by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy. Schmidt has also recently taken the helm at rocket company Relativity Space, which secured a key NASA contract this week to deliver scientific instruments to Mars in 2028.

As a preliminary step, two prototype plates were recently constructed near Bishop, California, serving as technology demonstrations, according to Hallinan.

To identify a suitable location for the Deep Synoptic Array, Hallinan and his team evaluated sites throughout the western United States, including California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. An ideal setting would be remote, minimizing interference from radio frequencies generated by devices like cell phones and Wi-Fi.

“This telescope is so sensitive that it can detect cell phones from the distance of the Sun,” Hallinan remarked.

The Great Basin in Nevada serves as a natural barrier against unwanted interference.

“The quiet valleys here have minimal population,” he added. “This site in White Pine County is the quietest location we evaluated, making it exceptionally suitable for radio astronomy.”

Source: www.nbcnews.com

Allen Telescope Array seeks radio signatures of technology from TRAPPIST-1 system

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The TRAPPIST-1 system is a compact system of at least seven exoplanets that are similar in size to Earth. Astronomers from Pennsylvania State University and the SETI Institute spent 28 hours scanning the system for signs of alien radio technology using the Allen Telescope Array. This project marks the longest single-target search for radio signals from TRAPPIST-1. Although astronomers found no evidence of extraterrestrial technology, their work introduced new ways to search for wireless techno-signatures in the future.

This artist's impression shows a surface view of one of the exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser / Spaceengine.org.

TRAPPIST-1 is an ultracool dwarf star located 38.8 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius.

This star is barely larger than Jupiter and has only 8% the mass of the Sun. It rotates rapidly and produces an energetic flare of ultraviolet light.

TRAPPIST-1 is the home planet of seven transit planets named TRAPPIST-1b, c, d, e, f, g, and h.

All of these planets are the same size or slightly smaller than Earth and Venus, and have very short orbital periods of 1.51, 2.42, 4.04, 6.06, 9.21, 12.35, and 20 days, respectively.

Presumably they are all tidally locked, meaning that the same side of the planet always faces the star, just as the same side of the moon always points towards the Earth. This creates a persistent night side and a persistent day side for each planet in TRAPPIST-1.

Three of the planets, TRAPPIST-1e, f, and g, are located in the star's habitable zone, meaning they may have an environment suitable for life.

“The TRAPPIST-1 system is relatively close to Earth and has detailed information about the planet's orbit, making it an excellent natural laboratory for testing these technologies,” said Penn State graduate student Nick Tasei said.

“The methods and algorithms we developed for this project could eventually be applied to other star systems, increasing the likelihood of finding regular communications between planets beyond our solar system (if they exist). ).

Tusay and his colleagues focused on a phenomenon called interplanetary occultations.

These occultations occur when one planet moves in front of another. If intelligent life exists in that star system, it is possible that radio signals sent between the planets could leak and be detected from Earth.

Astronomers used the upgraded Allen Telescope Array to scan a wide range of frequencies, looking for narrowband signals that could be a possible sign of alien technology.

They filtered through millions of potential signals and narrowed it down to about 11,000 candidates for further analysis.

They detected 2,264 of these signals during the predicted interplanetary occultation period. However, none of the signals were of non-human origin.

New features of the Allen Telescope Array include advanced software to filter signals, helping researchers separate possible alien signals from those on Earth.

They believe that improving these techniques and focusing on phenomena such as interplanetary occultations could increase the chances of detecting alien signals in the future.

Although scientists did not find any alien signals this time, they plan to continue refining their search techniques and exploring other star systems.

Future explorations using larger and more powerful telescopes could help scientists detect even fainter signals and expand our understanding of the universe.

“This study shows that we are getting closer to detecting radio signals similar to those we send into space,” Tusey said.

“Most searches assume some kind of intent, such as a beacon, because our receivers have a sensitivity limit to the minimum transmit power above what we transmit unintentionally.”

“But with better instruments, such as the upcoming Square Kilometer Array, we may soon be able to detect signals from alien civilizations communicating with our spacecraft.”

of the team result will appear in astronomy magazine.

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Nick Tasei others. 2024. TRAPPIST-1 wireless technology signature search using the Allen Telescope Array. A.J.in press. arXiv: 2409.08313

Source: www.sci.news

Murchison Wide Field Array hunts for signs of alien technology beyond our galaxy

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Astronomers Murchison Widefield Alley Researchers in Western Australia conducted a search for extraterrestrial signals emanating from around 2,800 galaxies pointing towards the Vela supernova remnant with a spectral resolution of 10 kHz.

This diagram shows what a Kardashev Type III civilization might operate like. Containing stellar energy in so-called Dyson spheres is one way to harness the enormous energy on a galactic scale. The resulting waste heat products should be detectable with telescopes. Image by Danielle Futselaar / ASTRON.

“When we think about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, we often consider the age and advancement of technology that could produce signals that we could detect with telescopes,” said Dr Chenoa Tremblay from the SETI Institute and Professor Steven Tingay from Curtin University.

“In popular culture, advanced civilizations are depicted as having interstellar spacecraft and the means to communicate.”

“In the 1960s, astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev proposed a scale for quantifying the degree of technological advancement of extraterrestrial intelligence.”

“The Kardashev scale has three levels. A Type I civilization uses all the energy available on its planet (1016 W); Type II civilizations can consume stellar energy directly (1026 W) and a Type III civilization could consume all the energy emitted by the galaxy (1036 “W)”

“Civilizations at the higher end of the Kardashev scale could generate vast amounts of electromagnetic radiation detectable at galactic distances.”

“Some of the ideas that have been explored in the past have been to harness the light of stars in our galaxy, to colonize the solar system, and to use pulsars as a communications network.”

“Radio waves' ability to penetrate space over long distances and even planetary atmospheres makes them a practical tool for searching for interstellar communications.”

The authors used the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), focusing on low radio frequencies (100 MHz), to look for signs of alien technology in galaxies beyond the Milky Way.

They observed about 2,800 galaxies in one observation, and determined the distances to 1,300 of them.

“This research represents a major step forward in efforts to detect signals from advanced extraterrestrial civilizations,” Dr Tremblay said.

“The MWA's wide field of view and low-frequency range make it an ideal tool for this type of study, and the limits we set will guide future research.”

of work Appeared in Astrophysical Journal.

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CD Tremblay & SJ Tingay. 2024. An extragalactic wide-field search for technosignatures with the Murchison Wide Field Array. ApJ 972, 76;doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ad6b11

Source: www.sci.news

Microwave ovens are home to a surprising array of bacteria

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Microwaves heat food but don't necessarily kill bacteria

Shutterstock/Stock Photo

Microwaves in homes, offices, and laboratories harbor a surprising variety of bacteria.

Microwaves are widely used to heat food and sterilize samples, but the radiation they emit is non-ionizing and does not damage biological molecules. Microwaves heat objects by vibrating water molecules, but bacteria are only killed if a high enough temperature is reached.

However, repeated heating and drying processes meant that microwaves were considered to be a difficult environment for microorganisms to survive.

Manuel Polker Researchers from the University of Valencia in Spain sampled 30 microwaves: 10 from private kitchens, 10 from shared kitchens such as corporate centers, scientific laboratories and cafeterias, and 10 from molecular biology and microbiology laboratories.

In total, the researchers found 747 different genera of bacteria within 25 bacterial phyla, with diversity lowest in domestic microwave ovens and highest in laboratory devices.

Many of the bacteria found in shared and single-family microwaves overlapped and were similar to bacteria commonly found on people's hands and elsewhere in the kitchen, suggesting that microbes don't need special adaptations to survive in microwaves, perhaps because food particles protect them from radiation, Polker said.

However, the microbiome found in the lab, where food was not cooked, was more distinctive and resembled those found in extremely dry, hot and irradiated environments, such as solar panels.

The researchers found that some of the bacteria found in household microwave ovens include: Klebsiella, Enterococcus and Aeromonaswhich may pose a risk to human health, but the microbial populations found on microwaves do not pose any unique or elevated risk compared to other common kitchen surfaces, the researchers said.

“What's clear is that the microwave cannot be trusted to be a cleaner environment in terms of microbes than the rest of the kitchen, and it should be cleaned just like the rest of the kitchen,” Polker says.

Belinda Ferrari A researcher from the University of New South Wales in Australia says she's not at all surprised that researchers found bacteria that can live in microwaves. “Bacteria can survive almost any extreme exposure and can adapt to anything,” she says.

Ferrari recommends regularly cleaning your microwave with a disinfectant: “Some microwaves in workplaces are filthy and no one cleans them,” she says.

She would like to see more detailed information about when microwaves were last cleaned in her research: “If we were to do this experiment, we would also like to study the biome before and after cleaning,” she says.

topic:

Source: www.newscientist.com

Unknown source of ultra-high energy extraterrestrial particle detected by telescope array

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An artist’s illustration of an extremely high-energy cosmic ray, named the “Amaterasu particle,” observed by the surface detector array of the Telescope Array experiment.Credit: Osaka Metropolitan University/L-INSIGHT, Kyoto University/Ryuunosuke Takeshige

A groundbreaking detection of extremely high-energy cosmic rays by a telescope array experiment points to a void in the universe and casts doubt on current theories about the origin and high-energy physics of cosmic rays. It raises questions about its source.

Discovery of an exceptional extraterrestrial particle

Researchers involved in the telescope array experiment announced that they had detected cosmic rays with unusual energy. This particle originates outside our galaxy and has an incredible energy level of more than 240 exaelectronvolts (EeV). Despite this remarkable discovery, its exact source remains elusive, as its direction of arrival does not point to any known celestial body.

The mystery of ultra-high energy cosmic rays

Cosmic rays are subatomic charged particles that come from space, and ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are a rare and extremely powerful type. These UHECRs have energies in excess of 1 EeV, which is about a million times the energy reached by man-made particle accelerators. These are thought to originate from the most energetic phenomena in the universe, such as black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and active galactic nuclei. However, its exact physics and acceleration mechanisms are still not fully understood. These high-energy cosmic rays occur infrequently, estimated at less than one particle per square kilometer per century, making their detection a rare event and requiring instruments with large collection areas. .

An artist’s illustration of ultra-high energy cosmic ray astronomy, which elucidates highly energetic phenomena as opposed to weak cosmic rays that are affected by electromagnetic fields.Credit: Osaka Metropolitan University/Kyoto University/Ryuunosuke Takeshige

A unique discovery of telescope arrays

The Telescope Array (TA) experiment, a large-scale surface detector array in Utah with an effective detection area of ​​700 square kilometers, successfully detected UHECR on May 27, 2021 at a breakthrough energy of approximately 244 EeV.

Given the very high energy of this particle, it should experience only a relatively small deflection by the foreground magnetic field, and therefore its direction of arrival should be expected to be more closely correlated with its source. Researchers point out that there is. However, our results show that the direction of arrival does not indicate an obvious source galaxy or other known objects that could be potential sources of UHECRs.

Instead, its direction of arrival points to a cavity in the large-scale structure of the universe, a region where galaxies are almost absent. Scientists believe this indicates a much larger magnetic deflection than predicted by galactic magnetic field models, an unidentified source in the local extragalactic neighborhood, or an incomplete understanding of the high-energy particle physics involved. This suggests that there is a possibility that

For more information on this discovery, see:

Reference: “Extremely high-energy cosmic rays observed by surface detector arrays”*†, RU Abbasi, MG Allen, R. Arimura, JW Belz, DR Bergman, SA Blake, BK Shin, IJ Buckland, BG Cheon, Tetsuya Fujii, Kazuya Fujisue, Kazuya Fujita, Masaki Fukushima, GD Furlich, ZR Gerber, N. Globus, Kazuto Hibino, Tatsuya Higuchi, Kazuya Honda, Daisho Ikeda, Hiroshi Ito, Akira Iwasaki, S. Jeong, HM Jeong, CH Jui, K. Kadota, F. Kakimoto, OE Kalashev, K. Kasahara, K. Kawata, I. Kharuk, E. Kido, SW Kim, HB Kim, JH Kim, JH Kim, I. Komae, Y. Kubota, MY Kuznetsov, KH Lee, BK Rubsandrjiev, JP Lundquist, JN Matthews, S. Nagataki, T. nakamara, A. Nakazawa, T. Nonaka, S. Ogio, M. Ono, H. Oshima, IH Park. , M. Potts, S. Pushilkov, JR Remington, DC Rodriguez, C. Lott, GI Rubtsov, D. Liu, H. Sagawa, N. Sakaki, T. Sako, N. Sakurai, H. Shin, JD Smith, P Sokolsky, BT Stokes, TS Stroman, K. Takahashi, M. Takeda, A. Takeda, Y. Tameda, S. Thomas, GB Thomson, PG Tyniakov, I. Tkachev, T. Tomita, SV Troitsky, Y. Tsunesada, S. Udo, FR Urban, T. Wong, K. Yamazaki, Y. Yuma, YV Zeser, Z. Zunder, November 23, 2023. science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.abo5095

Source: scitechdaily.com