I am thrilled that Megan Li (UCSD Physics and Astrophysics '22) will join the UCLA SETI Group this month to pursue a PhD program. Our first-year graduate students generally start in September, but Megan is eager to start early, which is music to my ears. Academically, she is outstanding and received the top score by all three faculty members who evaluated her graduate school application. Megan is also deeply committed to public outreach and diversity in STEM fields, which she exemplifies with tangible actions. For instance, she is the founder and president of Big Sister STEM, which currently serves approximately 50 girls in middle school and high school with weekly mentorship and bimonthly seminars. Megan has expressed a keen interest in the citizen science platform, and I expect that she will play a leading role in launching and managing our platform and analyzing the science results. I look forward to expanding and accelerating our search with Megan.
Our machine learning manuscript, with Dr. Paul Pinchuk (UCLA PhD '21) as lead author, has been published in the Astronomical Journal. To our knowledge, this paper describes the first deep learning search for radio technosignatures, as Paul applied the algorithm to 16 million interesting signals that sampled 25,000 stars and planetary systems. (Incidentally, there was a mistake in a caption in my previous newsletter: we have in fact detected 56 million signals and sampled 36,000 stars to date.) The publication was delayed because the manuscript sat on a reviewer's desk for 85 days, or several times longer than the generous review period expected by the Astronomical Journal. We are glad that the paper is finally out.
I also have less pleasant news to report. NASA released its annual research announcement "Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences 2022 (ROSES-2022)" on February 14, 2022. One of the programs described in the research announcement is the Exoplanet Research Program (XRP), from which we secured a research grant two years ago (see November 2020 newsletter). Whereas the 2020 announcement had stipulated that "Observational, archival, theoretical, and modeling proposals focused upon the detection of technosignatures are in scope of the XRP", the 2022 announcement adds a new restriction that will likely make technosignature searches unselectable: "only if the proposal convincingly demonstrates that the focus of the investigation is the advancement of exoplanet science." The search for technosignatures is not inherently focused on advancing exoplanet science, even though it could in principle provide extraordinary advances in our understanding of exoplanets. I have asked the NASA program managers to reconsider, but they are obviously under no obligation to consider my opinion. We may need another Act of Congress to compel NASA to invest in the search for technosignatures.
The seventh edition of the UCLA SETI course will start at the end of this month, with Green Bank Telescope observations expected sometime in April.
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Warm regards,
Jean-Luc Margot
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