Apr 17, 2017 08:16 PM
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...al/523104/
EXCERPT: [...] Unlike radio SETI, optical SETI looks for signals in the visible portion of the light spectrum. Lasers travel well over galactic distances. The light, concentrated into a narrow beam that can be 10 times as bright as the sun, would experience less interference from interstellar dust and gas than radio waves might. Laser emissions are also capable of carrying massive amounts of information. The network of cables at the bottom of the ocean is a collection of pulses of light, firing at high frequencies to transmit digital data and bring us the internet.
The dataset Tellis used for his study contained thousands of observations of stars as young as 200 million years and stars as old as nearly 10 billion years. Keck’s instruments collected millions of photons of light from these stars. What Tellis and his algorithm looked for were brief surges in photons. The first run of the data reported 5,000 potential candidates for mysterious laser beams, but they were eventually ruled out, explained away as emissions from stars’ outer layers, cosmic rays from our sun, or internal reflections from telescope instruments. Tellis got some firsthand Keck time to observe at least one target, KIC 8462852, a star about 1,500 light-years from Earth. In 2015, astronomers announced the Kepler space telescope had observed an unusual dimming of its light, which some believe could be caused by structures built by an advanced civilization around the star. The light emission observed from KIC 8462852 was the best candidate for an alien laser beam in the survey before it was ruled out....
EXCERPT: [...] Unlike radio SETI, optical SETI looks for signals in the visible portion of the light spectrum. Lasers travel well over galactic distances. The light, concentrated into a narrow beam that can be 10 times as bright as the sun, would experience less interference from interstellar dust and gas than radio waves might. Laser emissions are also capable of carrying massive amounts of information. The network of cables at the bottom of the ocean is a collection of pulses of light, firing at high frequencies to transmit digital data and bring us the internet.
The dataset Tellis used for his study contained thousands of observations of stars as young as 200 million years and stars as old as nearly 10 billion years. Keck’s instruments collected millions of photons of light from these stars. What Tellis and his algorithm looked for were brief surges in photons. The first run of the data reported 5,000 potential candidates for mysterious laser beams, but they were eventually ruled out, explained away as emissions from stars’ outer layers, cosmic rays from our sun, or internal reflections from telescope instruments. Tellis got some firsthand Keck time to observe at least one target, KIC 8462852, a star about 1,500 light-years from Earth. In 2015, astronomers announced the Kepler space telescope had observed an unusual dimming of its light, which some believe could be caused by structures built by an advanced civilization around the star. The light emission observed from KIC 8462852 was the best candidate for an alien laser beam in the survey before it was ruled out....