Meet COSMIC: An Alien Hunter Instrument at the VLA

COSMIC SETI (the Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is about to survey of 40 million stars for technosignatures using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). The VLA is the world’s largest radio telescope array operating at microwave frequencies. It’s also where Jodie Foster heard an alien signal in the 1997 movie “Contact.”

COSMIC SETI is a collaboration between the SETI Institute and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which operates the VLA, to bring a state-of-the-art search for extraterrestrial intelligence to the VLA for the first time. As the VLA conducts observations with its 27 antennas, COSMIC SETI will enable SETI Institute scientists to access a copy of that data to analyze for evidence of technosignatures, signs of technology not caused by natural phenomena.

Once up and running, it is estimated that COSMIC SETI will observe about 40 million galactic star systems in two years. It will be the most comprehensive SETI observing program ever conducted in the Northern Hemisphere, with high sensitivity and a colossal target list.

To discuss the ability of COSMIC SETI to conduct this unique technosignature search, we invited two researchers involved in the project. Chenoa Tremblay, radio astronomer at the SETI Institute and Mark Ruzindana, a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley. Together with Molly Bentley, executive Producer and Co-Host at Big Picture Science, they will discuss the potential of COSMIC SETI to detect technosignatures from such a large star system sample located “only” 900 light-years away from us.