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Through a multi-university collaboration, researchers have discovered a new, solid lubricating mechanism that can reduce friction in machinery at extremely high temperatures, well beyond the breakdown temperature of traditional solid lubricant such as graphite.

Scientist have concluded water did not arrive as early during Earth's formation as previously thought, an insight that bears directly on the question of when life originated on the planet. The finding is significant because the data reported by the study support the idea that water arrived towards the final stages of Earth's development into a planet from dust and gas, what geologists refer to as late accretion.

We can’t help ourselves but wonder about life elsewhere in the Universe. Any hint of a biosignature or even a faint, technosignature-like event wrests our attention away from our tumultuous daily affairs. In 1984, our wistful quest took concrete form as SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, SETI has turned up nothing. Recently, scientists used a powerful new data system to re-examine data from one million cosmic objects and still came up empty-handed. Did they learn anything from this attempt?

This effort used COSMIC, which stands for Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster. It’s a signal-processing and algorithm system attached to the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio astronomy observatory. According to SETI, it’s designed to “search for signals throughout the Galaxy consistent with our understanding of artificial radio emissions. “

Modern astronomy generates vast volumes of data and algorithms and automated processing are needed to comb through it all. So far, COSMIC has observed more than 950,000 objects, and the results of the effort are in a new paper. It’s titled “COSMIC’s Large-Scale Search for Technosignatures during the VLA sky Survey: Survey Description and First Results” and will be published in The Astronomical Journal. The lead author is Chenoa Tremblay from SETI.

Image of radio telescopes at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, located in Socorro, New Mexico. Image Credit: National Radio Astronomy Observatory

“The place of humanity in the Universe and the existence of life is one of the most profound and widespread questions in astronomy and society in general,” the authors write. “Throughout history, humans have marvelled at the starry night sky.”

In our modern technological age, we marvel not only with our eyes but with powerful telescopes. The Karl G. Jansky Array is one of those telescopes, though it’s actually 28 radio dishes working together as an interferometer. Each one is 25 meters across, and they’re all mounted on movable bases that are maneuvered around railway tracks. This gives the system the ability to change its radius and density so it can balance its angular resolution and its sensitivity.

The Array is used to observe astronomical objects like quasars, pulsars, supernova remnants, and black holes. It’s also used to search trillions of systems quickly for signs of radio transmissions.

Currently, the VLA is engaged in the VLA Sky Survey (VLASS), a long-term effort to detect transient radio signals in the entire visible sky. The elegance of the COSMIC system is that it can “tag along” as VLASS progresses. “COSMIC was designed to provide an autonomous real-time pipeline for observing and processing data for one of the largest experiments in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence to date,” the authors write.

One of the problems facing modern astronomy is the deluge of data. There aren’t enough astronomers or students to possibly manage it. “The idea is that we are receiving increasing quantities of data that must be sorted in new ways in order to find information of scientific interest,” the authors write. “Developing algorithms to search through data efficiently is a challenging part of searching for signs of technology beyond our solar system.”

There aren’t enough human brains to manage the tidal wave of valuable data created by modern astronomy. The signals we seek are buried in this wave, and we need automated help to find them. Image Credit: DALL-E

COSMIC is a digital signal processing pipeline that VLASS data flows through. It searches for signals that display temporal and spectral characteristics consistent with our idea of what an artificial technological signal would look like.

The sky is full of radio signals from astrophysical objects. In order for a signal to be considered a technosignature, it needs to be a narrowband signal, and its frequency should change over time as a result of the Doppler effect. That still leaves potentially millions of hits. Researchers are forced to make other assumptions about what might constitute a technosignature, and COSMIC filters through signals based on those assumptions. “In this pipeline, extraterrestrial technosignatures are characterized by a set of assumptions and conditions that, if not met, are used to eliminate hits that do not meet these assumptions,” Tremblay and her co-authors write. “The output of this search is a database of “hits” and small cutouts of the phase-corrected voltage data for each antenna around the hits called “postage stamps.”

COSMIC examined more than 950 million objects in space for technosignatures and found nothing. But that’s okay. SETI scientists still learned things from the effort by testing their system.

“As shown in <Figure 15>, within the last 11 months of operation, COSMIC has observed over 950,000 fields and is rapidly becoming one of the largest SETI experiments ever designed,” the authors write.

Figure 15 from the paper shows a plot in galactic coordinates of all the coordinates currently in the database observed from 29 March 2023 to 14 July 2024. The orange points represent data from
frequencies below 4 GHz (S-band), and the blue points are from data collected above 4 GHz (C-band). Image Credit: Tremblay et al. 2025.

Though COSMIC has observed almost 1 million sources, researchers focused on a small subset to rigorously test the postprocessing system. In a test field of 30 minutes of data, they searched toward 511 stars from the Gaia catalogue. “In this search, no potential technosignatures were identified,” the authors write.

However, this is just the beginning and constitutes a successful test of the system. Future efforts with COSMIC will be both faster and more automated, which is necessary to manage the vast volume of data in modern astronomy.

“This work overall represents an important milestone in our search,” the authors write in their paper’s conclusion. “With the rapidly growing database, we need new methods for sorting through the data, and this paper describes a rapid and viable filtering mechanism.”

Research: COSMIC’s Large-Scale Search for Technosignatures during the VLA Sky Survey:
Survey Description and First Results

The post SETI Researchers Double-Checked 1 Million Objects for Signs of Alien Signals appeared first on Universe Today.

Recognising that someone lacks information you possess is key for effective communication and cooperation, and bonobos seem to share this skill with humans

Researchers developed an automated system to help programmers increase the efficiency of their deep learning algorithms by simultaneously leveraging two types of redundancy in complex data structures: sparsity and symmetry.

Researchers developed an automated system to help programmers increase the efficiency of their deep learning algorithms by simultaneously leveraging two types of redundancy in complex data structures: sparsity and symmetry.

Scientists are hoping a new research technique will help unlock underwater secrets of marine wildlife.

National targets for solar and wind power will see reliance on natural gas plummet, reducing electricity price volatility across Europe, with major beneficiaries including the UK and Ireland, the Nordics, and the Netherlands.

Tiny copper 'nano-flowers' have been attached to an artificial leaf to produce clean fuels and chemicals that are the backbone of modern energy and manufacturing.

Researchers have developed a computer model to help scientists identify tumor-fighting immune cells in patients with lung cancer treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors.

Researchers have developed a way to print nanoparticles like ink, creating inexpensive sweat sensors that can continuously monitor multiple molecules.

Electrochemical reaction-based stimuli-responsive materials are shaping up the era of innovative display devices. By embedding luminescent europium(III) complexes and color-changing viologen derivatives in a layered clay matrix, the device achieves simultaneous control of light emission and color at low voltage. The use of clay-based materials also highlights an eco-friendly approach to enhancing electronic device performance. This innovation could revolutionize display technology and the development of sensors, adaptable to changing light conditions.

Electrochemical reaction-based stimuli-responsive materials are shaping up the era of innovative display devices. By embedding luminescent europium(III) complexes and color-changing viologen derivatives in a layered clay matrix, the device achieves simultaneous control of light emission and color at low voltage. The use of clay-based materials also highlights an eco-friendly approach to enhancing electronic device performance. This innovation could revolutionize display technology and the development of sensors, adaptable to changing light conditions.

Most metals expand when their temperature rises. This effect is extremely undesirable for many technical applications. Now, scientists have created a new material that hardly changes in length over an extremely wide temperature range.

Engineers developed a training method for multiagent systems, such as large numbers of drones, that can guarantee their safe operation in crowded environments.

Engineers developed a training method for multiagent systems, such as large numbers of drones, that can guarantee their safe operation in crowded environments.

Researchers have explored how integrating machine and deep learning techniques can create a standardized system for evaluating rock climbing routes to provide a difficulty grading scale that promotes inclusivity, accuracy and accessibility for all experience levels. The study found that the most successful approach for determining the difficulty of a rock-climbing route used route-centric, natural language processing methods.

A recent study by management scholars underscores the importance of organizations' dynamic capabilities for greener business practices. Analyzing data from 139 manufacturing companies, the research reveals that financial and technological expertise combined with adaptability to regulations and evolving consumer demands, are key to advancing the green transition.

With the growing popularity of telehealth comes new issues with billing.

Early detection of earthquakes could be vastly improved by tapping into the world's internet network with a groundbreaking new algorithm, researchers say. Fiber optic cables used for cable television, telephone systems and the global web matrix now have the potential to help measure seismic rumblings thanks to recent technological advances, but harnessing this breakthrough has proved problematic. A new paper seeks to address these challenges by adapting a simple physics-based algorithm to include fiber optic data that can then be used hand-in-hand with traditional seismometer measurements.