The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in Earth's Solar Transit Zone

TL;DR

This paper investigates Earth's transit zone as a target for SETI, identifying potential extraterrestrial observers who could detect Earth and proposing observational strategies for detecting alien signals.

Contribution

It models Earth's transit zone, estimates the number of potential target stars, and highlights the ETZ as an optimal region for SETI efforts using current and upcoming telescopes.

Findings

Approximately 10^5 K and G dwarf stars are in Earth's transit zone.

GAIA can identify all G dwarfs in the ETZ within five years.

The ETZ is an ideal region for targeted SETI searches.

Abstract

Over the past few years, astronomers have detected thousands of planets and candidate planets by observing their periodic transits in front of their host stars. Related methods might soon allow studies of the chemical imprints of life in extrasolar planetary atmospheres. Here, we address the reciprocal question, namely, from where is Earth detectable by extrasolar observers using similar methods. We explore Earth's transit zone (ETZ), the projection of a band around Earth's ecliptic onto the celestial plane, where observers can detect Earth transits across the Sun. The ETZ is between $0.520^\circ$ and $0.537^\circ$ wide due to the non-circular Earth orbit. The restricted ETZ (rETZ), where Earth transits the Sun less than 0.5 solar radii from its center, is ~$0.262^\circ$ wide. We first compile a target list of 45 K and 37 G dwarf stars inside the rETZ and within 1 kiloparsec (3260 lightyears) using the Hipparcos catalog. We then greatly enlarge the number of potential targets by constructing an analytic galactic disk model and find that ~$10^5$ K and G dwarf stars should reside within the rETZ. The ongoing GAIA space mission can potentially discover all G dwarfs among them (several $10^4$) within the next five years. Many more potentially habitable planets orbit dim, unknown M stars in the ETZ and other stars that traversed the ETZ long time ago. If any of these planets host intelligent observers, they could have identified Earth as a habitable, or even as a living, world, and we could be receiving their broadcasts today. The K2 mission, the Allen Telescope Array, the upcoming Square Kilometer Array, or the Green Bank Telescope might detect such deliberate extraterrestrial messages. Ultimately, the ETZ would be an ideal region to monitor by the Breakthrough Listen Initiatives, an upcoming survey that will constitute the most comprehensive search for extraterrestrial intelligence so far.