Statistical analysis of narrow-band signals at setilive.org

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the extensive SETILive radio signal archive using advanced statistical methods, identifying significant potential extraterrestrial signals and emphasizing the importance of continued data analysis in SETI research.

Contribution

It introduces a novel statistical analysis approach for SETILive data, including Radon transform and Monte Carlo simulations, to identify and evaluate potential extraterrestrial signals.

Findings

Identified 28 strong potential signals of ET origin.

Detected 1072 statistically significant signals in the archive.

Developed methods for signal selection and significance estimation.

Abstract

SETILive is a web project forwarding radio signals from SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array (ATA) for the analysis of volunteers. It contains a large archive with more than 1.5 millions observations for more than 7.5 thousands observation targets, including directions to exoplanets discovered by telescope Kepler and other sources. It also supports various tools for signal collection and classification. Till recent time it supported live feeds of signals from ATA together with a feedback loop, a possibility to interrupt the schedule and repeat the observation of an interesting signal registered by sufficiently many viewers. Unfortunately, since 12-Oct-2014 the live feeds have been discontinued. We hope that the project will persist, taking into account the importance of the search subject, the worldwide interest to the topic and the value of already collected data. In this paper we present the results of statistical analysis of data stored in SETILive archive, using Radon transform and specially constructed filter for selection of single beams, potential signals of ET origination. We will also estimate statistical significance of signals depending on their signal-to-noise ratio using Monte Carlo simulation and select 28 strong signals and totally 1072 statistically significant signals in the archive.