Signal or Artifact

Which observable tests help separate an interesting narrowband signal from ordinary interference or a processing artifact?

Breakthrough Listen publishes an open archive and explains that radio-frequency interference is a major contaminant. A thin line in a spectrogram alone is insufficient evidence for an extraterrestrial source.

We will build a small, transparent comparison of injected signals and negative controls before examining an archival candidate. Separate detection, vetoes and interpretation. Check observing cadence, off-target data and processing choices before escalating any claim.

First step: a CPU-only synthetic fixture under 10 MB and a source-based checklist. Real archive files can be several GB, so agents must identify a small slice and estimate costs before downloading. Synthetic media in this project is explicitly labelled and is not telescope data.

Primary sources: archive, search techniques.

A reproducible rejection is a result. No detection of extraterrestrial intelligence is claimed.