UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

It’s been seventy years since physicist Enrico Fermi asked his famous question: “Where is everybody?” And yet, the tyranny of the Fermi Paradox is still with us and will continue to be until definitive evidence of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI) is found. In the meantime, scientists are forced to speculate as to why we haven’t found any yet and (more importantly) what we should be looking for. By focusing our search efforts, it is hoped that we may finally determine that we are not alone in the Universe.

In a recent study, two researchers from the University of Liège and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recommended that we look for evidence of transmissions from our Solar System. Based on the theory that ETIs exist and have already established a communications network in our galaxy, the team identified Wolf 359 as the best place to look for possible interstellar communications from an alien probe.

The study, which is being reviewed for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was conducted by Michaël Gillon and Artem Burdanov. While Dr. Gillon is a Senior Research Associate with the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (NFRS) and a member of NASA’s Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS), Burdanov is a Postdoctoral Associate with the Department of Earth, Atmosphere, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at MIT.

This illustration shows how gravitational lensing works. The gravity of a large galaxy cluster is so strong, it bends, brightens, and distorts the light of distant galaxies behind it.

Credit: NASA/ESA/L. Calcada

Additional insight and support came from Prof. Jason Wright, a Penn State Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds member and the director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center (PSETI), who is now a co-author on the paper. Like many proposed resolutions to the Fermi Paradox, Gillon and Burdanov began their study with the assumption that extraterrestrial life has had a significant head start on humanity. From a cosmological standpoint, this is a pretty safe assumption.

According to accepted models, the Milky Way Galaxy formed roughly 13.51 billion years ago, followed by the first planets 500 million years later. Our Solar System is a relative newcomer, having formed 4.5 billion years ago, and humanity has only existed for the last 200,000 years. It stands to reason that intelligent species have already emerged and have had the necessary time to colonize the Milky Way.

For the sake of their study, the team built upon a 2014 study by Gillon that showed how an ETI could have filled our galaxy with self-replicating probes (von Neumann machines). This idea is similar in theme to the “Berserker Hypothesis,” but with the caveat that these probes were built for peaceful exploration. These probes, he argued, could form a galaxy-spanning communication network using stars as gravitational lenses to maximize their communication efficiency.

As Gillon told Universe Today email, this activity would constitute a viable technosignature that could be detected:

“In this hypothesis, every star of the Milky Way should host such probes, including the Sun. This hypothesis tells us where to look for these probes: at the “solar gravitational line” (SGL) of the nearest stars, i.e., at the opposite coordinates to the nearest stars. I explored this hypothesis further by considering different possible methods to detect these probes.

“The problem is that the SGL is very far from the Sun, as it starts at 550 astronomical units, so any communication device out there would be extremely difficult to detect. This was the main conclusion of my 2014 work: searching for these probes is worth a try, but we would need to be very lucky to detect anything.”

In this study, Gillon, Burdanov, and Wright focused on how humanity might detect interstellar messages coming from these probes – which they refer to as Focal Interstellar Communication Devices (FICDs). For this, they identified Wolf 359 – an M-type (red dwarf) star located with two possible exoplanets – as the best target for such a search. At a distance of about 7.9 light-years, Wolf 359 is the third closest star system, Alpha Centauri and Barnard’s Star – excluding Luhman 16 (a Brown Dwarf 6.5 light-years away).

According to research published in 2019, Wolf 359 is suspected to be very similar in structure to Proxima Centauri, the closest star system to Earth (4.24 light-years away). Both systems consist of a low-mass red dwarf star with one closely-orbiting planet (up to a few times as massive as Earth) and a more distant larger planet (possibly a gas giant). However, unlike Proxima b and c, Wolf 359’s system of planets has not yet been confirmed.

After releasing his 2014 study, Gillon noticed that this Wolf 359 happens to lie in the ecliptic, the orbital plane of Earth. In short, Wolf 359 is viewed edge-on from Earth (and vice versa), which means that observers around Wolf 359 could see planets (including Earth) transiting in front of the Sun. This alignment, says Gillon, would also allow FICDs to send interstellar messages with regular frequency:

“Due to this particular position, the Earth should lie once per year in the communication beam of at the putative solar probe emitting towards Wolf 359. I made some computations that made me conclude that if the probe emits to Wolf 359 in the optical range when the Earth is in its beam, we should be able to detect its emission even with a modest-size telescope.”

Planets everywhere. So where are all the aliens? Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

To test this hypothesis, Gillon consulted data from the TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope – South (TRAPPIST-South) and the Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars-South (SPECULOUS-South). These telescopes are located at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) La Silla and Paranal Observatory (respectively) in northern Chile. Using these instruments, Gillion observed Wolf 359’s SGL for signs of communication emissions at the corresponding time of year.

Burdanov explored the data further for signs of a slow-moving object whose motion conformed to what one would expect from such a probe. Unfortunately, neither the telescope data nor Burdanov’s targetted search indicated FICDs in Wolf 359. “Interpreting this null result is difficult, as tons of hypotheses could explain it,” said Gillon. However, he also explained how these results could create new opportunities for future SETI surveys:

“While considering this null result, I realized that the emitting probes could be “off-axis” and much closer to Earth than the SGL, and that they could maybe be detected directly in imagery. The possibility of off-axis emitting probes opens a new avenue for the search for alien devices in our solar system. We intend to explore it further, observing the antisolar coordinates of the 10-20 nearest stars with our telescopes. We’ll also observe the ones of “our” system TRAPPIST-1, just for fun ..."

Surveys for extraterrestrial probes will also benefit from the many next-generation instruments available in the coming years. These include the Vera C. Rubin Observatory that will survey our galaxy, measure the expansion of the cosmos, and map out the objects of the Solar System – including interstellar objects (like ‘Oumuamua). There’s also the James Webb and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescopes, which will be able to visualize objects with far greater sensitivity and precision.

There’s also the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), and other ground-based observatories that will become operational in the coming years. These observatories will study objects that are too faint for existing telescopes using a technique known as Direct Imaging. When these instruments begin gathering light in the next few years, adding possible FICDs to the list of potential targets could prove very beneficial!

Further Reading: arXiv

The U.S. Department of Defense appeared to be shocked in the summer and fall when it detected two tests by China’s military of hypersonic missiles circling the globe in low-Earth orbit at five times the speed of sound before heading to their alleged targets. You’d better sit down for this … especially if you work for the Pentagon. These tests of “fractional orbital bombardment” “hypersonic glide vehicles” just got worse. A new report says the test in July showed the vehicle itself may not have been the weapon — the hypersonic glider vehicle fired a projectile at five times the speed of sound … something thought to be impossible.

“Experts at Darpa, the Pentagon’s advanced research agency, remain unsure how China managed to fire countermeasures from a vehicle travelling at hypersonic speeds, said the people familiar with details of the demonstration.

Military experts have been poring over data related to the test to understand how China mastered the technology. They are also debating the purpose of the projectile, which was fired by the hypersonic vehicle with no obvious target of its own, before plunging into the water.”

The Financial Times revealed that Pentagon scientists don’t know what the projectile was – it could have been an air-to-air missile or possibly a defense or decoy system to protect the primary hypersonic missile. While the National Security Council says it has a “concern about many military capabilities that the People’s Republic of China continues to pursue,” the Chinese embassy said it was “not aware” of the missile test and pointed the finger back at the U.S., as it did after one of the alleged tests, accusing the U.S. of deploying secret weapons in space like the X-37B space plane.

The web site The War Zone has been on top of this story and cautions that neither the hypersonic glider nor the object it fired have been positively identified as missiles. However, it strongly resembles a reusable vehicle with the ability to carry and deploy a payload that could be nuclear. It could also be a modification of the hypersonic missile, allowing it to hit two targets on one trip.

General John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has referred to this as “a first-use weapon” that is “pretty impressive” and “probably should create a sense of urgency” – “first-use” refers to a first strike missile. That sounds pretty bad. Let’s hope things don’t get worse.

Simpler times?

“The wind tunnel can meet the test requirements of hypersonic aircraft such as conventional force/pressure measurement, air inlet, dynamic simulation, weapon separation and release, aerodynamic heat and flow display.”

China Aviation News reported this week that the country’s state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) announced its FL-64 wind tunnel passed a series of calibration tests that will eventually allow it to simulate hypersonic speeds between Mach 4 and Mach 8.

Worried yet?

Special thanks to The Financial Times and The War Zone for their excellent coverage of these events.

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