SETI searches at the Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT) Andrea Melis INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari Big History, SETI and future of Humankind, IASF Milano, 15 July 2019 Agenda • Overall view of the Sardinia Radio Telescope • New development in the context of an Italian Operative National Program (PON) • SETI activities: - Involvement of the SRT in the Breakthrough Listen Initiatives - Implementation of the Kahrnunen-Loeve Transform (KLT) • Conclusions Radio telescopes in Italy " " " Sardinia Radio Telescope The Sardinia Radio Telescope is a general purpose fully steerable radio telescope able to function in the range 300 MHz – 115 GHz. 6th IAA Symposium on Search for Life Signatures, Paris March 26-27, 2015 " Focal positions " First light receivers ROACH2 SArdinia Roach2-based Digital Architecture for Radio Astronomy (SARDARA) Andromeda observed with SARDARA at SRT CASPER boards evolution Square Kilometer Array Reconfigurable Architecture Board (SKARAB, alias ROACH3) MeerKat SKARAB-based building Analog to Digital Converter Hybrid Memory Cube Full-Stokes high-frequency resolution spectrometer Polyphase Corner Turner Polyphase ADC Filterbank (HMC) Filterbank Auto & Integr. Cross Polyphase Corner Turner Polyphase ADC Filterbank (HMC) Filterbank Radio Frequency System on Chip (RFSoC) Abaco commercial system Breakthrough Listen Initiatives - 100 millions of dollars in ten years for dedicated SETI observations - Green Bank Telescopes & Parkes offer ~20% of telescope time - SETI - Pulsar search - Fast Radio Burst search Italian team visiting UC Berkeley (July 2018) Breakthrough Listen team visiting SRT (June 2019) KLT KLT for SETI@home Conclusions • SRT will start to get the data, in the framework of the Breakthrough Listen initiatives, in a few months (begin of 2020) • A few percentage of SRT telescope time will be dedicated for SETI, especially for galactic center search in C-band and K-band • The KLT will be used in parallel to the FFT, as well as hopefully adopted by SETI@home project THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION! • .