A new technique is a dramatic breakthrough in the search for alien life, astronomers say. Researchers at the Breakthrough Listen project based at the University of California, Berkeley say they have developed a new way to be sure that any potential signal is really coming from space – and not from something more boring. Astronomers spend vast amounts of time looking for radio signals that might have come from alien civilisations as part of work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. But they have in the past been fooled by very human technology, such as cellphones, microwaves and car engines, that can produce a blast of radio signals that look as if they have come from distant worlds. One way to check whether signals are really alien is to point the telescope elsewhere and then repeatedly return to the same spot, with the hope of seeing the signal again and ensuring that it is not a false alarm. But that is not foolproof – and only works if the signal sticks around. Some of the most promising radio signals might only be detectable once. The so-called “Wow!” signal, for instance – a radio signal detected in 1977 that was so shocking the astronomer who found it wrote the exclamation on a printout – has not been detected since, and astronomers still do not know whether it was an alien message or just a mistake. Now scientists have devised a new test that can be used to see whether a signal has really passed through interstellar space, which should help show that it is not from elsewhere on Earth. It works by looking for “scintillation” – the changes in amplitude of a signal as it is affected by the cold plasma of space. “The first ET detection may very well be a one-off, where we only see one signal. And if a signal doesn’t repeat, there’s not a lot that we can say about that. And obviously, the most likely explanation for it is radio frequency interference, as is the most likely explanation for the Wow! signal,” said Andrew Siemion, principal investigator for Breakthrough Listen and director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, which operates the world’s longest running SETI program. “Having this new technique and the instrumentation capable of recording data at sufficient fidelity such that you could see the effect of the interstellar medium, or ISM, is incredibly powerful.” Dr Siemion called the breakthrough “one of the biggest advances in radio SETI in a long time” and said that it would be the first time researchers would be able to differentiate a real signal from a false alarm, even if it was only detected once. The technique can only be used for signals that have travelled 10,000 light years or more to Earth, researchers note. If it was closer to us, the scintillation effect cannot be seen because they are not travelling through enough of the interstellar medium, or ISM. The research is described in a new paper, ‘On Detecting Interstellar Scintillation in Narrowband Radio SETI’, published in The Astrophysical Journal. Read More Battery breakthroughs are about to trigger a transport revolution Huge asteroid nearly crashes into Earth – and is only spotted days later ChatGPT rival with ‘no ethical boundaries’ sold on dark web

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Emily Ratajkowski has issued some marriage advice to her 2.6 million TikTok followers – and some believe it's aimed at Sophie Turner following her divorce from Joe Jonas. The model, author and High Low podcast host said how she personally feels divorce by the age of 30 is "chic," with many more women agreeing. "So, it seems that a lot of young ladies are getting divorced before they turn 30," EmRata said. "As someone who got married at 26, has been separated for a little over a year [at] 32, I have to tell you, I don’t think there’s anything better," she added, referencing her split from Sebastian Bear-McClard. She went on to describe being in your twenties as being "the trenches," before adding: "There is nothing better than being in your 30s, still being hot, maybe having a little bit of your own money, figuring out what you want to do with your life [and] everything, and having tried that married fantasy and realising that it’s maybe not all it’s cracked up to be." It came after news broke that Joe Jonas filed for divorce from Sophie Turner, who he shares two children with. Jonas has reportedly requested joint custody of their young children. @emrata personally i find it chic to be divorced by the age of 30 EmRata's viral clip was soon inundated with over a million views and thousands more comments. "This is definitely softly directed at Sophie," one person wrote. "Love the support." Another agreed with the model's sentiment, writing: "Being single in your 30s is ELITE (typing this from my hotel in Paris)." "I skipped the marriage part and just stayed single," a third commented to which EmRata replied: "Good for you, wish i was that wise! I personally wouldn’t have understood marriage and would've worried about what i was missing in my 30s." Meanwhile, one TikToker joked: "If you aren’t married by 30 it just means you avoided your first divorce." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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