SETI

• AstronetX PBC, a Connecticut-based in-space commercial data services firm, has been awarded a $1.2M research grant by The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Moore Foundation) to design a telescope concept and develop enabling technologies for acquiring space science data from the surface of the moon.
• WESTPORT, Conn., Nov. 7, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- AstronetX PBC, a Connecticut-based in-space commercial data services firm, has been awarded a $1.2M research grant by The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Moore Foundation) to design a telescope concept and develop enabling technologies for acquiring space science data from the surface of the moon.
• This grant enables a breakthrough-moment in our pursuit to provide space-based observational and database services from the lunar surface.
• The envisioned AstronetX commercial, lunar-based imaging network will serve scientific applications in astrophysics, solar system science, Earth science, and planetary defense.

• During the meeting, several military officers testified that unidentified anomalous phenomena – the government’s name for UFOs – pose a threat to national security.
• Their testimony may have raised eyebrows in the chamber, but there’s still no public physical evidence of extraterrestrial life.

1. Whistleblower allegations

• The Pentagon has denied this claim, and it has denied the existence of any program designed to retrieve and reverse-engineer crashed UFOs.
• All witnesses at the hearing advocated for more government transparency around reports of UFOs.
• While having access to more data may help understand what’s going on, as the University of Arizona’s Chris Impey put it, “the gold standard is physical evidence.”

  Read more:
  Whistleblower calls for government transparency as Congress digs for the truth about UFOs

2. Sociological explanations

• People want explanations for ambiguous situations, and they’re easily influenced by others.
• “Poorly documented UFO pics and videos spread on social media, leading media outlets to grab and republish the most intriguing.
• Whistleblowers emerge periodically, fanning the flames with claims of secret evidence.”

  Read more:
  Why people tend to believe UFOs are extraterrestrial

3. Signature detection

• Instead, scientists could potentially pick up signals like radio waves or pollution from some distant galaxy that might indicate extraterrestrial technology.
• The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is a group of scientists all working on the search for extraterrestrial life.
• “However, this approach assumes that extraterrestrial civilizations want to communicate with other technologically advanced life,” Huston and Wright explained.

4. Ethical considerations

• I’m an astronomer who studies and has written about cosmology, black holes and exoplanets.
• As the technology has become more powerful, AI algorithms have begun helping astronomers tame massive data sets and discover new knowledge about the universe.

Better telescopes, more data

• As telescopes have continued to improve, the sheer number of celestial objects humans can see and the amount of data astronomers need to sort through have both grown exponentially, too.
• AI algorithms are the only way astronomers could ever hope to work through all of the data available to them today.
• There are a number of ways AI is proving useful in processing this data.

Picking out patterns

• AI algorithms – in particular, neural networks that use many interconnected nodes and are able to learn to recognize patterns – are perfectly suited for picking out the patterns of galaxies.
• Now the algorithms are so effective that they can classify galaxies with an accuracy of 98%.
• Now, researchers are using AI to sift through reams of data much more quickly and thoroughly than people can.
• This has allowed SETI efforts to cover more ground while also greatly reducing the number of false positive signals.

Making new discoveries

• But it is also quite powerful at finding objects or phenomena that are theorized but have not yet been discovered in the real world.
• To do this, astronomers first use AI to convert theoretical models into observational signatures – including realistic levels of noise.
• Finally, radio astronomers have also been using AI algorithms to sift through signals that don’t correspond to known phenomena.

Making predictions and plugging holes

• As in many areas of life recently, generative AI and large language models like ChatGPT are also making waves in the astronomy world.
• The team that created the first image of a black hole in 2019 used a generative AI to produce its new image.
• To do so, it first taught an AI how to recognize black holes by feeding it simulations of many kinds of black holes.

• Chicago, April 20, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The TAWANI Foundation announces its commitment of $1.3M to the SETI Institute and continued support for the Robert A. Pritzker Center for Meteoritics and Polar Studies at the Field Museum in honor of Earth Day.
• This year, the Institute’s Anthropo Snow Project will receive $210,000, the first installment of a three-year gift totaling $630,000.
• Heck serves as curator of Meteoritics and Polar Studies and senior director of research at the Field Museum.
• “We are proud to support these and other paleoenvironmental studies this Earth Day and beyond.”
  To learn more about TAWANI Foundation grants, visit www.tawanifoundation.org/our-grants .