China News Agency, Beijing, April 28th (Reporter Sun Zifa) Does "Alien" exist? Are there extraterrestrial life and extraterrestrial civilization? These issues have received much attention for a long time. The reporter learned from the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on the 28th that the 500-meter-diameter spherical radio telescope (FAST), which was built in Pingtang, Guizhou, and is commonly known as the "Sky Eye" of China, has launched the Extraterrestrial Civilization Search (SETI), one of its five scientific goals .
Data map: The world's largest single-aperture radio telescope-500-meter-diameter spherical radio telescope (FAST for short). China News Agency reporter He Junyi
Astronomical experts say that the discovery of more and more extraterrestrial planets, coupled with the revolutionary advancement of instruments and observation capabilities, has led the renaissance of the search for extraterrestrial civilizations. Among them, FAST is bound to become the main force in the search and research of extraterrestrial civilizations. .
According to the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in September 2018, the doctoral student Zhang Zhisong cooperated with the University of California, Berkeley, Beijing Normal University and other units to install and test the high-resolution extraterrestrial civilization search back-end at the FAST site. In July 2019, the obtained drift scan data was analyzed and processed to achieve a frequency resolution of 4 hertz (Hz), and most of the artificial radio frequency interference was successfully removed, and multiple sets of narrowband candidate signals were selected.
On the basis of this work, on April 27, 2020, the FAST team of the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences published a paper that quantified the prospect of a survey of extraterrestrial civilizations. Based on the test observations of the "super-Earth" numbered GJ 273 b and the calculation of the isotropic equivalent power of extraterrestrial civilizations, FAST has the potential to detect thousands of extraterrestrials to be announced by the Terrestrial Planetary Search Observatory (TESS) Terrestrial civilizations on the planet, and the second kind of Kardashov civilization in the nearby star fairy galaxies or "aliens" with more advanced technology.
Researcher Li Xu of the FAST team also revealed that the FAST team will further cooperate with the Breakthrough Listen program to jointly promote the search for extraterrestrial civilizations to reach an unprecedented depth and expand human understanding of their position in the universe. (Finish)