The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in Earth's Solar Transit Zone

Abstract

Over the past few years, astronomers have detected thousands of planets and candidate planets by observing their periodic transits in front of their host stars. Related methods might soon allow studies of the chemical imprints of life in extrasolar planetary atmospheres. Here, we address the reciprocal question, namely, from where is Earth detectable by extrasolar observers using similar methods. We explore Earth's transit zone (ETZ), the projection of a band around Earth's ecliptic onto the celestial plane, where observers can detect Earth transits across the Sun. The ETZ is between $0.520^{\circ }$ and $0.537^{\circ }$ wide due to the non-circular Earth orbit. The restricted ETZ (rETZ), where Earth transits the Sun less than 0.5 solar radii from its center, is ~$0.262^{\circ }$ wide. We first compile a target list of 45 K and 37 G dwarf stars inside the rETZ and within 1 kiloparsec (3260 lightyears) using the Hipparcos catalog. We then greatly enlarge the number of potential targets by constructing an analytic galactic disk model and find that ~$10^5$ K and G dwarf stars should reside within the rETZ. The ongoing GAIA space mission can potentially discover all G dwarfs among them (several $10^4$) within the next five years. Many more potentially habitable planets orbit dim, unknown M stars in the ETZ and other stars that traversed the ETZ long time ago. If any of these planets host intelligent observers, they could have identified Earth as a habitable, or even as a living, world, and we could be receiving their broadcasts today. The K2 mission, the Allen Telescope Array, the upcoming Square Kilometer Array, or the Green Bank Telescope might detect such deliberate extraterrestrial messages. Ultimately, the ETZ would be an ideal region to monitor by the Breakthrough Listen Initiatives, an upcoming survey that will constitute the most comprehensive search for extraterrestrial intelligence so far.

Astrobiology cover story (2016/4), 3 colored figures, 1 Table, language synchronized with version published in Astrobiology

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Cited by in corpus (25)

• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: 1.1-1.9 GHz observations of 692 Nearby Stars
• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: A 3.95-8.00 GHz Search for Radio Technosignatures in the Restricted Earth Transit Zone
• Digital color codes of stars
• Transit Visibility Zones of the Solar System Planets
• Past, Present and Future Stars that can see Earth as a Transiting Exoplanet
• Interstellar communication network. I. Overview and assumptions
• Interstellar communication. X. The colors of optical SETI
• EXONEST: The Bayesian Exoplanetary Explorer
• Simulation of the Earth's radio leakage from mobile towers as seen from selected nearby stellar systems
• Intermittent Signals and Planetary Days in SETI
• Which Stars can see Earth as a Transiting Exoplanet?
• Searching the SETI Ellipsoid with Gaia
• SETI in 2020
• A VERITAS/Breakthrough Listen Search for Optical Technosignatures
• Detecting Extraterrestrial Civilizations That Employ an Earth-level Deep Space Network
• Mutual detectability: a targeted SETI strategy that avoids the SETI Paradox
• One of Everything: The Breakthrough Listen Exotica Catalog
• Earth through the looking glass: how frequently are we detected by other civilisations through photometric microlensing?
• Technosignature Searches with Real-time Alert Brokers
• Explicit relations and criteria for eclipses, transits and occultations
• A Cool Earth-sized Planet Candidate Transiting a Tenth Magnitude K-dwarf From K2
• DSN Transient Observatory
• Ground to Dust: Collisional Cascades and the Fate of Kardashev II Megaswarms
• Modeling the Solar System I: Characterization Limits from Analytic Timing Variations
• A Search for Radio Technosignatures at the Solar Gravitational Lens Targeting Alpha Centauri