BENGALURU: Breakthrough Listen — the initiative to find “techno-signatures”, or signs of intelligent life in the universe — on Monday announced the results from a new method of searching data driven by artificial intelligence.
In a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the team analyse 480 hours of data from the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia, and report eight previously undetected signals of interest that have certain characteristics expected of genuine technosignatures.
The research, led by University of Toronto undergraduate student Peter Ma, who began working with the Breakthrough Listen team while still in high school, identified around 3 million signals in scans of 820 stars observed with GBT.
“The key issue with any techno-signature search is looking through this huge haystack of signals to find the needle that might be a transmission from an alien world,” explained Steve Croft, an astrophysicist with the Breakthrough Listen team at the University of California, Berkeley (and one of Ma’s research advisors).
Croft added: “Vast majority of the signals detected by our telescopes originate from our own technology — GPS satellites, mobile phones, and the like. Peter’s algorithm gives us a more effective way to filter the haystack and find signals that have the characteristics we expect from technosignatures.”
Classical techno-signature algorithms compare scans where the telescope is pointed at a target point on the sky with scans where the telescope moves to a nearby position, in order to identify signals that may be coming from only that specific point, Breakthrough added.
These techniques, it said, are highly effective. For example, they can successfully identify the Voyager-1 space probe, at a distance of 20 billion kilometres, in observations with the GBT. But these algorithms struggle in crowded regions of the radio spectrum, where the challenge is akin to listening for a whisper in a crowded room.
“The process developed by Ma inserts simulated signals into real data, and trains an artificial intelligence algorithm known as an autoencoder to learn their fundamental properties. The output from this process is fed into a second algorithm known as a random forest classifier, which learns to distinguish the candidate signals from the noisy background,” Breakthrough said.
Andrew Siemion, Breakthrough Listen’s Principal Investigator, said that in 2021 their classical algorithms uncovered a signal of interest, denoted BLC1, in data from the Parkes telescope and that Peter’s algorithm was even more effective in finding signals like this.
“Any techno-signature candidate needs to be confirmed, however, and when we looked at these targets again with the GBT, the signals did not re-appear. But by applying this new technique to even larger datasets, we can more effectively identify techno-signature candidates, and hopefully eventually even a confirmed techno-signature,” Siemion added.
Breakthrough Initiatives Executive Director S Pete Worden said it was exciting to see new approaches being developed by imaginative young people at the beginning of their scientific careers.
“We’ll continue to monitor the stars Peter observed, and we’ll continue to develop our use of artificial intelligence to help us try to answer humanity’s most profound question: are we alone?” Worden said.
Cherry Ng, another of Ma’s research advisors at the University of Toronto and now an astronomer at the French National Center for Scientific Research said these results dramatically illustrate the power of applying modern machine learning and computer vision methods to data challenges in astronomy, resulting in both new detections and higher performance.
“…Application of these techniques at scale will be transformational for radio techno-signature science,” Ng added.
Stating that larger datasets were imminent, Breakthrough added how it recently announced the start of observations using the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa.
“There is such a large volume of data. The more traditional ways of searching for extraterrestrial life are just not sufficient,” explains Ma.

Pakistan’s moves to loosen its grip on the currency and increase fuel prices indicate that the beleaguered nation is finally taking the unpopular decisions needed to secure the $6.5 billion bailout program from the International Monetary Fund.
The rupee fell to as low as 270 per dollar on Monday, according to the foreign-exchange desk at AKD Securities Ltd., as authorities allowed the currency to be more determined by the market, one of the preconditions of the IMF for the loan. The government also increased gasoline prices to record over the weekend, ahead of the arrival of the IMF team on Tuesday for a loan review after months of delay over the next loan tranche.
Pakistan is spiraling deeper into crisis amid a shortage of dollars and accelerating inflation, increasing the urgency for Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to secure funds from the IMF. The country direly needs funds as its reserves dropped to $3.7 billion, less than one month of import cover.
“Pakistan has gotten serious about the IMF program by taking these decisions even though we are in an election year,” said Suleman Rafiq Maniya, head of advisory at Vector Securities Pvt. “All depends on the IMF team visit and their reaction. These measures are quite painful and have a huge political cost.”
Sharif has said his coalition government is determined to complete the bailout plan after a delay in implementing key decisions, even though it means paying a political cost just months away from national elections. A tough task lies ahead for the nation’s economic managers led by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who will need to convince the IMF that the country is ready to implement other tough measures, including raising taxes and gas prices.
Frontier markets seeking IMF financing are facing greater pressure to loosen their grip on currencies, which will help improve their current-account balances. Egypt this month suffered its third devaluation in less than a year. Calculations by Bloomberg Economics show the rupee should stabilize at 266 per dollar, according to a note Monday by Ankur Shukla, an analyst in Mumbai.
In Pakistan, the rupee’s slide this month was triggered by the decision of money exchange companies to abolish the limit on the dollar-rupee rate in the open market. Supply of dollars among onshore money-changing businesses has dried up as locals turned to the black market, as the greenback was being sold at about 10% above advertised rates.

Shares of Adani Group companies remained under pressure for the third straight session on Monday with majority of them witnessing a crash yet again.
The deepening market rout has now led to losses worth $65 billion in the group’s stock values, according to a Reuters report.
The current round of fall follows a report by Hindenburg Research last week which flagged concerns about the conglomerates debt levels and the use of tax havens.
On Monday, Adani Transmission dropped 14.91%, Adani Green by 20%, Adani Total Gas by 20%, Adani Power by 5%, and Adani Wilmar by 5%.
However, shares of flagship Adani Enterprises climbed 4.21% after its follow on public offer (FPO) was subscribed 2%.
The developments also had an impact on the stock market which remained volatile during the entire session. Benchmark BSE sensex gyrated nearly 1,000 points intra-day before staging a smart comeback in late trades on selective buying.
Adani rout hits $65 billion
Adani Group’s lengthy weekend rebuttal to Hindenburg’s report did little to soothe investor sentiments today. The 3-day selloff has now erased nearly $65 billion market value amid a share sale by Adani’s flagship that was meant to underline the tycoon’s ascension on the global stage.
While the Adani Group has portrayed Hindenburg’s allegations as baseless and an attack against India itself, the latter’s report is reviving longstanding investor concerns about the conglomerate’s corporate governance.
The saga also threatens to weaken broader confidence in India, until recently a top investment destination for Wall Street, and accelerate a nascent shift toward a reopening China.

The selloff is also fast eroding the wealth of Adani, Asia’s richest man, after his stocks were some of the best performers last year not just in the local market, but also on the broader MSCI Asia Pacific Index.
From being the 4th richest in the global billionaire rankings till Wednesday last week, Adani has now dropped to the 8th spot with a total net worth of $88.2 billion, as per the Forbes real time billionaires list. However, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows Adani at 7th spot with a wealth of $92.7 billion.

This is in sharp contrast to September last year, when Adani’s wealth had surged to over $155 billion, making him the 2nd richest person in global billionaires ranking and the first Indian (and Asian) to break into the top 3 list.
In a little over two and half years, Gautam Adani‘s wealth had galloped over 13 times. In January 2020 just before the onset of Covid pandemic, his net worth was about $10 billion.
In 1988, Gautam Adani had set up Adani Enterprises (then Adani Exports) to start a commodities trading business. Soon he set up Mundra port for captive export-import operations. Within a decade it also emerged as the biggest coal trading company in the country and one of India’s largest foreign exchange earners.
Adani Group’s response to Hindenburg report
The Adani group had on Sunday slammed the Hindenburg report and likened the damning allegations to a “calculated attack” on India, its institutions and growth story, saying the allegations are “nothing but a lie”.
“Needless to say that Hindenburg has created these questions to divert the attention of its target audience while managing its short trades to benefit at the cost of investors,” the group said.

The Gautam Adani-led group also said that the report is selective and manipulative presentation of matters already in public domain to caste a false narrative.
They also claimed that the Hindenburg report is rife with conflict of interest and intended only to create a false market in securities.
Some 65 of the 88 questions posed by Hindenburg are based on Adani’s public disclosures and the conduct of the American short seller “is nothing short of a calculated securities fraud under applicable law,” Adani Group statement said.
The group further reiterated that it will “exercise rights to pursue remedies to safeguard our stakeholders before all appropriate authorities.”
The Adani Group’s response comes ahead of the final few days of a $2.5 billion share sale by Adani Enterprises, which received overall subscriptions of 1% on Friday.
“Mala fide intention is apparent given its timing when Adani Enterprises is undertaking the largest equity FPO,” the group stated.
Here is full response of Adani Group

Here’s the full report by Hindenburg Research

Hindenburg responds to Adani Group’s charges
US short seller Hindenburg Research rejected Adani Group’s charge that its report was an attack on India, saying a “fraud” cannot be obfuscated by nationalism or a bloated response that ignored response to key allegations.
Commenting on the 413-page response, Hindenburg said it believed India was a vibrant democracy and an emerging superpower with an exciting future and it was Adani Group which was holding it back through “systematic loot”.

Hindenburg stood by its last week’s report that said its two-year investigation found Adani Group “engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades”.
Hindenburg said the response by the conglomerate run by Asia’s richest man Gautam Adani “opened with the sensationalistic claim that we are the ‘Madoffs of Manhattan’.”
Hindenburg responded saying Adani Group “predictably tried to lead the focus away from substantive issues and instead stoked a nationalist narrative.”
“Adani Group has attempted to conflate its meteoric rise and the wealth of its chairman, Gautam Adani, with the success of India itself,” it said.
“We disagree. To be clear, we believe India is a vibrant democracy and an emerging superpower with an exciting future. We also believe India’s future is being held back by Adani Group, which has draped itself in the Indian flag while systematically looting the nation.”
Stating that a “fraud is fraud even when it’s perpetrated by one of the wealthiest individuals in the world,” it said Adani’s ‘413-page’ response only included about 30 pages focused on issues related to the report.
Here’s Hindenburg’s full response on Adani Group’s charges

LIC reviews Adani response
According to a report by Reuters, state-run Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), India’s largest insurer, is reviewing Adani Group’s response to scathing criticism by a US short-seller and will hold talks with the group’s management within days.
“Presently there is a situation that’s emerging and we are not sure what is the factual position … Since we are a large investor, we have the right to ask relevant questions and we will definitely engage with them,” LIC managing director Raj Kumar told Reuters.
LIC says it has invested Rs 36,470 crore ($4.47 billion) in Adani companies, about 1% of its assets under management.
“Of course, we are studying the 413-page reply given by Adani Group,” Kumar said on Monday about the group’s response to concerns raised by Hindenburg.

“We will also see if the concerns are addressed. If we believe the concerns are not addressed, we will seek further clarification from them.”
LIC owned a 4.23% stake in the flagship Adani Enterprises as of end-December, more than 9% in Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, nearly 6% in Adani Total Gas and 3.65% in Adani Transmission, data from the Bombay Stock Exchange shows.
Dollar bonds continue to fall
Dollar bonds issued by entities of Adani Group continued to fall on Monday following a scathing report by a US short seller which triggered a rout in the conglomerate’s listed firms.
US dollar-denominated bonds issued by Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone continued their fall into a second week with the bond maturing in August 2027 down 5 cents to 73.03 cents, the lowest since June 2020.
International bonds issued by Adani Green Energy, Adani Economic Zone, Adani Transmission and Adani Electricity Mumbai also fell.
(With inputs from agencies)