Space weather could be hindering our search for alien life
A recent SETI Institute study suggests that space weather, like stellar winds and plasma bursts, could be scrambling alien radio signals before they reach us.
This makes it tougher for scientists to spot these signals using current search methods.
M-dwarf stars may cause this problem
The team found that wild space weather can stretch out narrow radio signals, making them harder to detect.
M-dwarf stars, which make up most of the stars in our galaxy, are especially likely to cause this problem.
New approach to searching for alien signals
Thanks to these findings, researchers have a new approach for picking targets and designing better ways to catch altered signals.
As co-author Grayce C. Brown put it, understanding how space messes with transmissions means we can design searches that are better matched to what actually arrives at Earth.