Strategies for the Detection of ET Probes Within Our Own Solar System

Abstract

Arguments are reviewed in support of the hypothesis that ET would more likely send physical probes to surveil our Solar System and communicate with Earth than to communicate from afar with interstellar radio, infrared or laser beacons. Although the standard SETI practice of targeting individual stars or galaxies with powerful telescopes might detect a foreground local probe by serendipity, an intentional hunt for those probes would entail a different set of strategies, most notably sacrificing sensitivity (needed to detect a very faint and very distant signal) in exchange for a widened field-of-view (because a local signal can be reasonably hypothesized to be relatively bright). This paper suggests a number of strategies to detect local ET probes.

Accepted for publication in JBIS: Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 7/28/2- Formatting updated

References in corpus (4)

• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: A 3.95-8.00 GHz Search for Radio Technosignatures in the Restricted Earth Transit Zone
• Interstellar communication network. II. Deep space nodes with gravitational lensing
• Breakthrough Listen Observations of 1I/'Oumuamua with the GBT
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Cited by in corpus (5)

• A Search for Optical Laser Emission from Proxima Centauri
• SETI in 2020
• Laser Communication with Proxima and Alpha Centauri using the Solar Gravitational Lens
• The Drake Equation at 60: Reconsidered and Abandoned
• The Search for Deliberate Interstellar SETI Signals May Be Futile