The Copernican Principle Rules Out BLC1 as a Technological Radio Signal from the Alpha Centauri System

TL;DR

Applying the Copernican principle, the paper argues that the probability of Alpha Centauri hosting a technological civilization is extremely low, thus ruling out BLC1 as a signal from there, and supports natural origins for most Fast Radio Bursts.

Contribution

The paper introduces a probabilistic framework based on the Copernican principle to evaluate extraterrestrial signals and applies it to BLC1, ruling out its artificial origin.

Findings

Probability of Alpha Centauri hosting a civilization is ~10^-8.

BLC1 is unlikely to be a technological signal from Alpha Centauri.

Most Fast Radio Bursts are consistent with natural origins.

Abstract

Without evidence for occupying a special time or location, we should not assume that we inhabit privileged circumstances in the Universe. As a result, within the context of all Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars, the origin of a technological civilization on Earth should be considered a single outcome of a random process. We show that in such a Copernican framework, which is inherently optimistic about the prevalence of life in the Universe, the likelihood of the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, hosting a radio-transmitting civilization is $\sim 10^{-8}$. This rules out, \textit{a priori}, Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1 (BLC1) as a technological radio signal from the Alpha Centauri system, as such a scenario would violate the Copernican principle by about eight orders of magnitude. We also show that the Copernican principle is consistent with the vast majority of Fast Radio Bursts being natural in origin.