A new machine learning-operated algorithm just detected eight new radio signals coming from five stars that are 30 to 90 lightyears away. While the signals probably aren’t from extraterrestrials, we also don’t know for sure.
Maybe the aliens are communicating using “technosignatures” and we’re just now finding them for the first time.
The scientists behind the algorithm, from the University of Toronto, say they’ve “streamlined the search for extraterrestrial life by using a new algorithm to organize the data from their telescopes.” Using machine learning, the algorithm weeds out human-made interference to allow scientists to focus on real signals from deep space and then find patterns in that information that could show they came from technologically generated signals.
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“We need to distinguish the exciting radio signals in space from the uninteresting radio signals from Earth,” Peter Ma, a Toronto undergraduate student the lead author on the new paper, which appears in Nature Astronomy, says in a news release.
Read more: Popular Mechanics
