In a new study, a team of Penn State astronomers and the NASA jet propulsion laboratory has analyzed when and where the transmissions of the human deep space would be the most detectable by an extraterrestrial observer outside our solar system and suggest that the models they see could be used to guide our own research of extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).
Analysis of rising liaison transmission newspapers in the depth network in the past 20 years, fan and al. found that these emissions were mainly directed along the ecliptic plan, towards or directly from the sun and to other planets. Image credit: Gemini AI.
“Humans communicate mainly with the spaceships and the probes we sent to study other planets like Mars,” said Penn State Pinchen Fan.
“But a planet like Mars does not block all the transmission, therefore a remote spacecraft or a planet positioned along the way of these interplanetary communications could potentially detect the overflow; this would happen when the earth and another planet of the solar system align from their point of view.”
“This suggests that we should look for the alignment of planets outside our solar system when looking for extraterrestrial communications.”
“Seti researchers often seek the universe of signs of past or current technology, called technosignatures, as proof of smart life.”
“Given the direction and frequency of our most common signals, gives an overview of the place where we should seek to improve our chances of detecting extraterrestrial technosignatures.”
In the study, the researchers analyzed the NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) newspapers, a system of soil installations which allows bidirectional radio communications with objects of human manufacturing in space, acting as a relay to send orders to a spaceship and receive information they refer.
They carefully adorned the DSN newspapers with information on the locations of spacecraft to determine the calendar and the directionality of radio communications from the earth.
Although several countries have their own networks in depth space, the researchers said that the DSN managed by NASA should be representative of the types of communications from the earth, in part because NASA has led most of the missions in in -depth space to date.
“DSN provides the crucial link between the earth and its interplanetary missions like the NASA New Horizons Spatial, which is now out of the solar system, and the NASA / ESA / CSA James Webb space telescope,” said Dr. Joseph Lazio, an astronomer from the Jet of NASA propulsion laboratory.
“It sends some of the strongest and most persistent radio signals of humanity in space, and the public newspapers of its transmissions allowed our team to establish the temporal and spatial models of these transmissions in the past 20 years.”
For the study, scientists have concentrated on transmissions to deep space, including transmissions to the telescopes in space as well as on interplanetary spacecrafts, instead of transmissions intended for spaceships or satellites in low orbit, which are relatively low and would be difficult to detect at a distance.
They found that the radio signals of the deep space were mainly directed to spacecrafts near Mars.
Other common transmissions have been directed to other planets and to telescopes at the point of the sun’s sun – points in space where the gravity of the sun and the earth maintains the telescopes in a relatively fixed position such as views of the earth.
“Based on the data of the last 20 years, we have found that if an extraterrestrial intelligence was in a place that could observe the alignment of the earth and March, there is a 77% chance that they are on the path of one of our transmissions – more likely orders of magnitude than to be in a random position at a random moment,” said Fan.
“If they could see an alignment with another planet in the solar system, there is a 12% chance that they are on the way to our transmissions.”
“However, when you do not observe an alignment of the planet, these chances are tiny.”
According to the team, to improve our own research as technosignatures, humans should look for the alignment of exoplanets or at least when exoplanets align with their host star.
Astronomers frequently study exoplanets during alignment with their host star. In fact, most of the currently known exoplanets have been detected by looking for the darkening of a star when a planet crosses or transit, its host star of the Earth Line.
“However, because we are starting to detect many exoplanets in the last decade or two, we do not know many systems with two or more exoplanets in transit,” said Fan.
“With the next launch of the nancy nancy grace romance spatial telescope of NASA, we plan to detect one hundred thousand exoplanets not detected before, so our potential research area should increase considerably.”
Because our solar system is quite flat with most planets in orbit on the same plane, the majority of DSN transmissions have occurred within 5 degrees of the orbital plane of the earth.
If the solar system was a plate with all the planets and objects seated on this plate, human transmissions tended to follow the surface of the plate, rather than pulling in space at a raw angle.
The authors also calculated that an average DSN transmission could be detected at around 23 light years using telescopes like ours.
“Focusing efforts on the solar systems that are in the 23 light years and especially whose plane is oriented with its advantage towards the earth could improve our search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” they said.
The team now plans to identify these systems and quantify the frequency to which they could have received signals from the earth.
“Humans are early enough in our space trip, and while we reach our solar system later, our transmissions to other planets will only increase,” said Penn State professor Jason Wright.
“Using our own communications on deep space as a reference, we have quantified how future extraterrestrial intelligence researchers could be improved by focusing on systems with special orientations and alignments of the planet.”
The team’s article was published online today in the Astrophysical newspaper letters.
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Pinchen fan and al. 2025. Detection of extraterrestrial civilizations which use a network of deep space at the level of the earth. Apjl 990, L1; Two: 10.3847 / 2041-8213 / ADF6B0
