Kavli Affiliate: Michael McDonald
| First 5 Authors: Alex Thomas, Natalie LeBaron, Luca Angeleri, Phillip Morgan, Varun Iyer
| Summary:
We discuss our transient search for directed energy systems in local
galaxies, with calculations indicating the ability of modest searches to detect
optical Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) sources in the closest
galaxies. Our analysis follows Lubin (2016) where a messenger civilization
follows a beacon strategy we call "intelligent targeting." We plot the required
laser time to achieve an SNR of 10 and find the time for a blind transmission
to target all stars in the Milky Way to be achievable for local galactic
civilizations. As high cadence and sky coverage is the pathway to enable such a
detection, we operate the Local Galactic Transient Survey (LGTS) targeting M31
(the Andromeda Galaxy), the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and the Small
Magellanic Cloud (SMC) via Las Cumbres Observatory’s (LCO) network of 0.4 m
telescopes. We explore the ability of modest searches like the LGTS to detect
directed pulses in optical and near-infrared wavelengths from Extraterrestrial
Intelligence (ETI) at these distances and conclude a civilization utilizing
less powerful laser technology than we can construct in this century is readily
detectable with the LGTS’s observational capabilities. Data processing of
30,000 LGTS images spanning 5 years is in progress with the TRansient Image
Processing Pipeline (TRIPP; Thomas et al. (2025)).
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