THE BREAKTHROUGH LISTEN SEARCH FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE BEYOND THE EARTH

摘要

The Breakthrough Listen Initiative (BL) was launched on July 20, 2015 at the Royal Society in London, UK with a charge to conduct the most comprehensive and sensitive search for advanced life in humanity's history. The first BL observational campaign kicked off in December 2015, when the Lick Observatory 2.4-m Automated Planet Finder (APF) telescope embarked on optical SETI observations of 200 stars nearby to Earth. In January 2016, the 100-meter Green Bank Telescope (GBT) began radio-wavelength observations of hundreds of nearby stars and the nearest galaxies. Starting October 2016, the GBT will be joined by the Parkes 64-meter radio telescope in Australia, to observe stars and galaxies not viewable from the Northern hemisphere. Work is also underway designing SETI instruments for the next generation of radio telescopes. Here we detail important milestones achieved during the first year of the program, describe the key BL SETI surveys and briefly describe current facilities.