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

Breaking down 2023 Open Championship tee times with a look at the field, purse and prize money at Royal Liverpool, and how fans can watch the TV coverage.It's time for The Open Championship as American golf fans will get to enjoy some coffee golf for the last major championship of the 2023 ...

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Not everyone would celebrate if their other half was filmed sharing a bed with another person. But adult entertainers Lena the Plug and Adam22 are certainly not everyone. Indeed, such was the delight felt by Adam22 (real name Adam Grandmaison) that his wife had successfully shot an adult scene with porn star Jason Luv, that he decided to treat her to a lavish gift. The ‘No Jumper’ podcast host posted a video to social media showing his missus standing with her eyes closed next to a green Lamborghini. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Addressing the camera, he then announced: “OK, Lena, I’m so proud of you doing your first ever BBC scene that I decided that I wanted to get you a little something nice.” She then opened her eyes and shrieked: “What? This? For me? Babe!” before embracing her husband. (For the avoidance of doubt, “BBC” does not refer to the British Broadcasting Corporation here but to a very explicit slang term that we most certainly don’t endorse.) Lena the Plug (real name Lena Nersesian) and Luv had their erotic encounter at the end of June, to the shock of millions of fans. She and Adam are known for their podcast ‘Plug Talk’ which sees them interview a female porn actor, then have sex with her at the end of the episode. But this was the first time she’d had sex with another man since the start of her relationship with the YouTuber seven years ago. Adam admitted that he initially felt conflicted about their liaison, but soon came to embrace it. “It’s officially been a week since I let my wife do a porn with another guy,” he tweeted earlier this month. “I felt a little jealous at first but overall it wasn’t that big a deal. She’s watched me sleep with hundreds of girls and it’s never affected our relationship. “Sleeping with that gentleman has been amazing for both her career and our business @plugtalkshow. Overall I’m glad we did it,” he added. It comes after the content creator found himself subjected to a torrent of online mockery for “allowing” his wife to perform with a male colleague. Lena was quick to defend her man, telling TMZ: “I've had 200 threesomes with him and women. Is that a simp? "Someone who's been given all of this sexual experience and I get one guy and it's like a big deal?" 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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