Long Wavelength Array (LWA): The Greater Ear in search of ETs Civilizations!

Fathom the universe in search of extrasolar planets and extraterrestrial artificial signals. These are just two of the many goals set the Long Wavelength Array (LWA) , the new Radio Telescope under construction in the desert of New Mexico. Already this summer, will start up its first station consists of a set of 256 antennas. Once completed, LWA will consist of 53 stations for a total of 13,000 antennas spread over an area of about 400 km in diameter.
Goals: the search for extrasolar planets and, perhaps, signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.


The antennas of the first station of the Long Wavelength Array in New Mexico (credit: LWA Project)

LWA is also distinguished by the range of radio frequencies with which it will work: between 20 and 80 MHz, corresponding to wavelengths between 15 and 3.8 meters, is a region of the electromagnetic spectrum hitherto little used because of cost and technical limitations. The advance of technology has given new impetus to the industry but now with this telescope will open a new course in the history of radio astronomy!

The LWA will be a low-frequency radio telescope designed to produce high-sensitivity, high-resolution images in the frequency range of 10-88 MHz, thus opening a new astronomical window on one of the most poorly explored regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. This will be accomplished with large collecting area (approaching 1 square kilometer at its lowest frequencies) spread over an interferometric array with baselines up to at least 400 km, located mainly in the state of New Mexico.

Key Science Drivers
1.Acceleration of Relativistic Particles in:
◦Hundreds of supernova remnants in normal galaxies at energies up to 1015 eV
◦Thousands of radio galaxies & clusters at energies up to 1019 eV
◦Ultra-high energetic cosmic rays at energies up to 1021 ev and beyond


2.Cosmic Evolution & the High Redshift Universe
◦Evolution of Dark Matter & Energy by differentiating relaxed and merging clusters
◦Study of the 1st black holes & the search for HI during Epoch of Reionization (EOR) & beyond


3.Plasma Astrophysics & Space Science
◦Ionospheric Waves & Turbulence
◦Acceleration, Turbulence, & Propagation in the interstellar medium (ISM) of Milky Way & normal galaxies
◦Solar, Planetary, & Space Weather Science


4.Transient Universe
◦Possible new classes of sources (coherent transients like GCRT J1745-3009)
◦Magnetar Giant Flares
◦Extrasolar planets
◦Prompt emission from gamma ray bursts (GRBs)

Partner institutions
The LWA Project includes several institutions. The founding LWA members are the University of New Mexico, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in partnership with the Naval Research Laboratory. Virginia Tech and University of Iowa joined the LWA Project in July 2007 and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory joined in September 2008.

List of Participating Institutions:

•University of New Mexico
•Naval Research Laboratory
•University of Iowa
•Virginia Tech
•Los Alamos National Lab
•Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Source:
www.phys.unm.edu...
www.phys.unm.edu...

reply to post by Arken


they are using radio frequencies to produce an image like sonar? 80MHz wow now times that by each antenna at 256 which is also interesting as each signal is 2 bits and 80mhz is 80,000,000 baud per second each baud is 2 bits times 80,000,000 gives you 1,600,000,000 bits per sec times 256 so that's 409,600,000,000 bits per sec so thats 613,250,000,000 bytes per sec = 598876952.125 kilobytes per sec = 584840.7745361328 mega bytes per sec which equals 571.1335688829422 gigabytes per sec which is half a terrabyte a sec of information. Add in attenuation though air and distance traveled with i bet is out into space and i guessing half signal loss but your still in the high megabyte range space is a vacuum so there is no loss of signal. but what i cant figure out for the life of me is just how they are getting signal back as it could be reflected in any direction? Sounds more like a device for getting broadband internet to the space station then high resolution sound wave pictures through space.

reply to post by Arken


Very nice thread Arken. This is some really exciting news! I cant wait for the first public release of info or images. I just have one question, you mentioned that they were scanning from 20 to 80 Mhz, then in the quoted text they say 10 to 88Mhz. Which one is it? I am on my cell, sorry to be a rash you kno.
WOW! @ pcrobotwolf: you just gave me some hectic homework. I've never heard of a relation between hz and bits and i've never heard of bauds.

Thanks again for bringing this to attention.

reply to post by Arken


I am curious.. When I read this article something kept nagging at me about the picture. It reminded me of the supposed response that was received in 2000 and 2001.

Way back in 1974 a message was sent to a region in space containing a boat load of stars from the aricebo observatory in Puerto Rico. The message we sent was a basic over view - numbers, elements that make us up, our planetary system makeup including the planet we live on, our population and finally a description of our technology we used to send the message.

The supposed response came in 2000 / 2001 in the form of crop circles in Chilbolten. One of those crop circles was the message that was sent out. The received message however contained some changes to the origional message.

The last part of the received message was a description of their supposed transmitter. The crop circle that was received a year prior was also in the form of the ET equipment used to transmit.

Granted this seems farfetched but thought I would point it out anyways. I am not all that versed in this area and the technicalities involved, so I throw it out for people to discuss / discredit etc.

Chilbolton messages

reply to post by Xcathdra


Yes. A very and still unexplained Crop Circle!

Originally posted by Arken
reply to post by Xcathdra

 

Yes. A very and still unexplained Crop Circle!

Yeah I wish it would be researched a bit more seriously than it was (imo anyways). The equipment that ET supposedly used resembled the LWA array being built... Why I brought it up in this thread..

We seem to have this nack of having unusual artifacts from history that are just now seeming to be something completely different. I just saw a program on Stonehenge.. They just noticed that if you view stonehenge from the sky looking down that there are rings around stonehenge that expand outwards.

Upon closer inspection they noticed the rings correlate to the planets in our Solar System..

Anyways, not trying to derail your topic.. Just found it coincidental and thought I would post it.

reply to post by Xcathdra


No problem, your adds are interesting as usual.

The website of the project says 10 to 88 MHz. Anything below 10 likely to be absorbed by the atmosphere, and interference from FM broadcasting stations become a problem above 88. Television broadcasting used to take place on 54 to 88 MHz, but since the switch to HDTV, I don't believe there are many stations active in this range any longer. Hearing SETI signals in this range could be a challenge. The background noise level is much higher than at the usual SETI frequencies. Ross

Very interesting
Flagged up!

Interferometry is an AMAZING technique, i remember reading about a project to build an interferometric antenna on the "dark" side of the moon, spanning several hundred kilometers.... Imagine that!.


Another project I remember was to build several small/medium space (optical) telescopes to be distributed in an array encompassing several AUs, thus making a Solar System-wide optical interferometer!
I know, it seems like a pharaonic enterprise, but that's just because we keep wasting our resources in people-killing toys...
Very mature of us...
Drakus.