Megan Grace Li
September 28, 2023
Zoom recording
Abstract:
UCLA SETI is conducting a search for narrowband radio technosignatures in collaboration with UCLA students and volunteers from the general public. Our search uses the L-Band Receiver of the Green Bank Telescope, which spans (1.15–1.73 GHz). From its conception in 2016, UCLA SETI has viewed over 50,000 stars and reviewed over 77 million candidate signals, all of which are concluded to be radio frequency interference. Each Spring, UCLA SETI hosts the UCLA SETI course, where undergraduate and graduate students of various disciplines are invited to contribute to our search. Additionally, this year, UCLA SETI launched “Are we alone in the universe?”, a citizen science collaboration hosted by Zooniverse. Through this platform, volunteers recognize and classify various forms of radio frequency interference. The signals that are classified on Zooniverse have been pre-selected out of ~77 million candidate signals as the most likely to be generated by extraterrestrials. Funded by NASA, The Planetary Society, and generous donors, “Are we alone in the universe?” has already inspired over 12,000 volunteers who have collectively submitted over 380,000 classifications. Along with results from our volunteers, we are excited to present a signal injection and recovery analysis, a modified figure of merit (inspired by the Drake figure of merit), a formalism for existence limits, and the detection of signals from Ma, et al. (2023) without the use of AI.