Andrew Siemion

The Breakthrough Listen program has the most powerful SETI equipment on the planet, and access to the largest telescopes on the planet, we can look at The Breakthrough with greater sensitivity and for a wider range of signal types than any other experiment in the world. Related : Why is this star dimming ? Astronomers still don't know One farfetched theory about the star is that aliens are somehow responsible for the star’s dimming, perhaps by having built a structure that passes in front of it, although Dan Werthimer, the chief scientist at Berkeley SETI, said Andrew Siemion thinks that’s incredibly improbable.

The advantage is that it's very easy to distinguish, lots of the galaxies produces radio waves. If we see lots of energy in an area, it's an unmistakable marker of technology.

We're going to look very closely, as closely as we can. We are limited in terms of how long we can view a target given the curvature of the earth (and) instrumentation, if we're awarded the observation, we'll have between 24 to 36 hours with a variety of different radio receivers.

At first I thought they were absolutely nuts -- it wasn't until they told me their data had been vetted by the Kepler team at NASA.

The SETI Institute will develop and install an interface on the VLA, permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky.