Scientists scanned billions of stars for seven hours for signs of alien technology

One of the world’s most sensitive telescopes has been hunting for signs of alien life in the stars.

Three Australian researchers have been using it to hunt for aliens in the Milky Way.

They focussed their attention on the galactic center and listened out for “alien technosignatures”.

A technosignature is a measurable effect that can be used as evidence of past or present technology.

For example, the right telescope could technically pick up radio waves that indicate they come from an alien source and not from natural causes.

The researchers checked out 144 planets outside our solar system and billions of stars.

They listened for seven hours but unfortunately didn’t hear anything alien or odd.

Researchers use the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), which is a radio telescope on Earth that can search deep space.

It’s made up of 4,096 spider-like antennas and can be found in the Australian desert.

Details of the research appeared this week on arXiv.

It’s also been accepted for publication in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.     

The MWA may have not found signs of aliens this time but it will likely be used again in a similar hunt.

The telescope has been used for similar research but it hadn’t studied such a large number of exoplanets until this particular project.

Scientists like to hunt for other planets in the hope of finding one like our own as this could indicate life.

There’s also the possibility that alien life survives in a way we don’t understand yet or is emitting signals that we don’t have the technology to pick up.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced here with permission.