SERENDIP (Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations) is aSearch for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program originated by theBerkeley SETI Research Center at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.[1]
SERENDIP takes advantage of ongoing "mainstream"radio telescope observations as a "piggy-back" or "commensal" program. Rather than having its own observation program, SERENDIP analyzesdeep space radio telescope data that it obtains while otherastronomers are using the telescope.
The initial SERENDIP instrument was a 100-channelanalog radiospectrometer covering 100 kHz ofbandwidth. Subsequent instruments have been significantly more capable, with the number of channels doubling roughly every year. These instruments have been deployed at a large number of telescopes including the NRAO 90m telescope at theGreen Bank Observatory and theArecibo 305m telescope.
SERENDIP observations have been conducted at frequencies between 400MHz and 5GHz, with most observations near the so-called CosmicWater Hole (1.42 GHz (21 cm) neutralhydrogen and 1.66 GHzhydroxyl transitions).
SERENDIP V was installed at theArecibo Observatory in June 2009. The digital back-end instrument was anFPGA-based 128 million-channel digital spectrometer covering 200 MHz of bandwidth. It took data commensally with the seven-beam Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA).[2]
The next generation of SERENDIP experiments, SERENDIP VI was deployed in 2014 at bothArecibo and theGreen Bank Telescope.[3] SERENDIP VI will also look for fast radio bursts, in collaboration with scientists fromUniversity of Oxford andWest Virginia University.[4]
The program has found around 400 suspicious signals, but there is not enough data to prove that they belong toextraterrestrial intelligence.[5] In September–October 2004 the media wrote aboutRadio source SHGb02+14a and its artificial origin, but scrutiny has not been able to confirm its connection with an extraterrestrial civilization.[6] Currently no confirmed extraterrestrial signals have been found.[7]
