Strategies and Advice for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Abstract

As a guide for astronomers new to the field of technosignature search (i.e. SETI), I present an overview of some of its observational and theoretical approaches. I review some of the various observational search strategies for SETI, focusing not on the variety of technosignatures that have been proposed or which are most likely to be found, but on the underlying philosophies that motivate searches for them. I cover passive versus active searches, ambiguous versus dispositive kinds of technosignatures, commensal or archival searches versus dedicated ones, communicative signals versus "artifacts", "active" versus derelict technologies, searches for beacons versus eavesdropping, and model-based versus anomaly-based searches. I also attempt to roughly map the landscape of technosignatures by kind and the scale over which they appear. I also discuss the importance of setting upper limits in SETI, and offer a heuristic for how to do so in a generic SETI search. I mention and attempt to dispel several misconceptions about the field. I conclude with some personal observations and recommendations for how to practice SETI, including how to choose good theory projects, how to work with experts and skeptics to improve one's search, and how to plan for success.

arXiv comment20 pages, two figures. v.2&3 contain a rearrangement of sections and some textual cleanup

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• The Case for Technosignatures: Why They May Be Abundant, Long-lived, Highly Detectable, and Unambiguous
• Disruption of a Planetary Nitrogen Cycle as Evidence of Extraterrestrial Agriculture
• A Radio Technosignature Search of TRAPPIST-1 with the Allen Telescope Array
• A Bayesian Analysis of Technological Intelligence in Land and Oceans
• Simulation of the Earth's radio leakage from mobile towers as seen from selected nearby stellar systems
• The Number of Possible CETIs within Our Galaxy and the Communication Probability among These CETIs
• SETI in 2021
• Limits of Detecting Extraterrestrial Civilizations
• The Grass of the Universe: Rethinking Technosphere, Planetary History, and Sustainability with Fermi Paradox
• Closing the Information Gap in Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Studies