Reassessing the Role of Doppler Drift in Technosignature Discrimination
Description
Doppler drift—the apparent change in frequency due to the relative motion of transmitter and receiver—is widely used in radio and optical SETI to discriminate between terrestrial interference and astrophysical signals. However, this filtering strategy may inadvertently exclude the most deliberately engineered transmissions.
This paper challenges the prevailing assumption that credible technosignatures must display natural Doppler behavior. It explores the plausibility that advanced civilizations may precompensate for Earth’s motion, transmitting signals that appear Doppler-invariant at the time of reception. These deliberate transmissions could be systematically overlooked by current search algorithms.
We propose a new tiered framework for interpreting signal plausibility based on the distance from Earth and the type of information a civilization might have access to—ranging from electromagnetic leakage and atmospheric biosignatures to directed signals and ancient Earth spectra. This approach emphasizes that Doppler-stable signals, rather than being dismissed as artifacts, may merit increased scrutiny.
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Additional details
Dates
- Created
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2025-05-25
References
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