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There are between 10 and 50 billion potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy, says Bill Diamond. It makes his job rather difficult.
Mr Diamond is the chief executive of the US-based research organisation Seti Institute. The letters “Seti” are an acronym for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
“Seti, as an endeavour, is looking for science and technology beyond the solar system as evidence of life and intelligence, and that’s by and large a needle in a haystack problem,” he says.
“We’re looking for something that is likely exceedingly rare, and may be very difficult to find and extract from the background phenomena that you’re observing at the same time.”
But new tools are helping the search. The ability of artificial intelligence (AI) to both handle massive datasets – and to spot anomalies – is transforming the hunt for alien intelligence.
One such project involves a Seti Institute partnership with the US’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico. This federal facility uses radio frequencies to study celestial objects, such as planets, stars and asteroids.
Seti is building a parallel, AI-powered software system for the observatory’s core facility, the Very Large Array. Built between 1973 and 1981, the VLA comprises 28 large, 25m diameter, dish antennas spaced out across a desert plain. Imagine the satellite dishes you find on people’s homes, just on a giant scale.
When operational, the AI will be able to process every bit of data captured – two terabytes (TB) every second. To put that into context, modern laptops
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