It is in orbit with another star, which is itself a massive blue supergiant with a ferocious wind of its own. WR140 is one of a few dusty Wolf-Rayet stars found in a binary system. Credit: Amanda Smith / IoA / University of Cambridge, Author providedĬritically, this wind contains elements such as carbon that stream out to form dust. While all stars have stellar winds, these overachievers drive something more like a stellar hurricane. The radiation field around Wolf-Rayets is so intense, dust and wind are swept outwards at thousands of kilometers per second, or about 1% the speed of light. In a rare but beautiful display, they can sometimes emit a plume of dust into space stretching hundreds of times the size of our entire Solar System. These are among the most extreme stars known. WR140 is what's called a Wolf-Rayet star. Our model, published in Nature, explains the strange process by which the star produces the dazzling pattern of rings seen in the Webb image (itself now published in Nature Astronomy). Luckily, our team at the University of Sydney had already been studying this very star, known as WR140, for more than 20 years-so we were in prime position to use physics to interpret what we were seeing. Some on the wild fringe even claimed it as evidence for "alien megastructures" of unknown origin. That first transatlantic signal has only travelled 122 light years, reaching just 0.0000015 per cent of the stars in our Milky Way.The internet immediately lit up with theories and speculation. To put it in perspective, humans started using radio waves to communicate across large distances in 1901. This is where my optimism for finding intelligent life begins to fade. It's the speed of light.Įverything we rely on to communicate via space requires light, and it can only travel so fast. It's always interesting to ponder who or what might be living out in the Universe, but there is one problem we must overcome to meet or communicate with aliens. This is a research area I'm excited to watch progress and eagerly await results.Īs of writing this article, sadly no alien laser signals have been found yet. To search for these mysterious flashes in the night sky, we need speciality instruments in locations around the globe, which are currently being developed and deployed. This is because even here on Earth we're investigating laser communication and laser-propelled light sails. Some astronomers hypothesise that intelligent beings might use massive lasers to communicate or even to propel spacecraft. The SETI Institute is also looking for signals that would be best explained as "space lasers". The Allen Telescope Array in California is the first built specifically to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Using telescopes around the globe, from the 64-metre Murriyang Dish (Parkes) here in Australia, to the 64-antenna MeerKAT array in South Africa, the search is one of epic proportions. Over a 10-year period a total amount of US$100 million will be invested in this effort, and they have a mighty big task at hand.īreakthrough Listen is currently targeting the closest one million stars in the hope of identifying any unnatural, alien-made radio signals. This is one of many projects funded by US-based Israeli entrepreneurs Julia and Yuri Milner, with some serious dollars attached. One of the most exciting searches to date is Breakthrough Listen, the largest scientific research program dedicated to looking for evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth. If anything out there is trying to communicate, it's a pretty fair bet they would do it through radio waves. The reason we think any intelligent life would communicate via radio waves is due to the waves' ability to travel vast distances through space, rarely interacting with the dust and gas in between stars. In the last 80 years, programs dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) have worked tirelessly searching for cosmic "hellos" in the form of radio signals. A detection of intelligent life would fundamentally change how we see ourselves in the Universe. It is this second possibility which really excites me, and should excite you too. Unlike in Star Wars, we're not talking far, far away in another galaxy, but rather around other nearby stars.
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