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How Much SETI Has Been Done? Finding Needles in the *n*-Dimensional Cosmic Haystack

Space Sciences

How Much SETI Has Been Done? Finding Needles in the *n*-Dimensional Cosmic Haystack

J. T. Wright, S. Kanodia, et al.

This groundbreaking research challenges the common assumption about the search for extraterrestrial radio signals, revealing that our search efforts represent only a tiny fraction of the cosmic landscape. Conducted by Jason T. Wright, Shubham Kanodia, and Emily Lubar, this study provides a new eight-dimensional model of the 'Cosmic Haystack' that highlights the vastness of unexplored space in our quest for communication beyond Earth.

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Playback language: English
Abstract
Many articulations of the Fermi Paradox implicitly or explicitly assume humanity has searched for extraterrestrial radio transmissions and found few or none. This paper challenges that premise, arguing that search completeness is extremely low. The authors develop a quantitative, eight-dimensional model of the "Cosmic Haystack" to calculate the fraction of this search space examined by several large radio SETI programs. They conclude that the fraction searched is very small, comparable to the ratio of a small swimming pool to Earth's oceans. A Python script is provided to calculate haystack volumes for future searches.
Publisher
The Astrophysical Journal
Published On
Authors
JASON T. WRIGHT, SHUBHAM KANODIA, EMILY LUBAR
Tags
Fermi Paradox
extraterrestrial life
radio SETI
Cosmic Haystack
search completeness
quantitative model

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