In the ever growing realm of acronyms, you can’t do much better than COSMIC – the Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This is a collaboration between the SETI Institute and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which operates the Very Large Array in New Mexico. The news out of COSMIC could not be better for technosignature hunters: Fiber optic amplifiers and splitters are now installed at each of the 27 VLA antennas.

What that means is that COSMIC will have access to the complete datastream from the entire VLA, in effect an independent copy of everything the VLA observes. Now able to acquire VLA data, the researchers are proceeding with the development of high-performance Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) code for data analysis. Thus the search for signs of technology among the stars gains momentum at the VLA.

Image: SETI Institute post-doctoral researchers, Dr Savin Varghese and Dr Chenoa Tremblay, in front of one of the 25-meter diameter dishes that makes up the Very Large Array. Credit: SETI Institute.

Jack Hickish, digital instrumentation lead for COSMIC at the SETI Institute, takes note of the interplay between the technosignature search and ongoing work at the VLA:

“Having all the VLA digital signals available to the COSMIC system is a major milestone, involving close collaboration with the NRAO VLA engineering team to ensure that the addition of the COSMIC hardware doesn’t in any way adversely affect existing VLA infrastructure. It is fantastic to have overcome the challenges of prototyping, testing, procurement, and installation – all conducted during both a global pandemic and semiconductor shortage – and we are excited to be able to move on to the next task of processing the many Tb/s of data to which we now have access.”

Tapping the VLA for the technosignature search brings powerful tools to bear, considering that each of the installation’s 27 antennas is 25 meters in diameter, and that these movable dishes can be spread over fully 22 miles. The Y-shaped configuration is found some 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico in the area known as the Plains of San Agustin. By combining data from the antennas, scientists can create the resolution of an antenna 36 kilometers across, with the sensitivity of a dish 130 meters in diameter.

Each of the VLA antennas uses eight cryogenically cooled receivers, covering a continuous frequency range from 1 to 50 GHz, with some of the receivers able to operate below 1 GHz. This powerful instrumentation will be brought to bear, according to sources at COSMIC SETI, on 40 million star systems, making this the most comprehensive SETI observing program ever undertaken in the northern hemisphere. (Globally, Breakthrough Listen continues its well-funded SETI program, using the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia and the Parkes Observatory in Australia).

Cherry Ng, a SETI Institute COSMIC project scientist, points to the range the project will cover:

“We will be able to monitor millions of stars with a sensitivity high enough to detect an Arecibo-like transmitter out to a distance of 25 parsecs (81 light-years), covering an observing frequency range from 230 MHz to 50 GHz, which includes many parts of the spectrum that have not yet been explored for ETI signals.”

The VLA is currently conducting the VLA Sky Survey, a new, wide-area centimeter wavelength survey that will cover the entire visible sky. The SETI work is scheduled to begin when the new system becomes fully operational in early 2023, working in parallel with the VLASS effort.

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