Technosignature Searches Of Interstellar Objects

With the discovery of the third confirmed interstellar object (ISO), 3I/ATLAS, we have entered a new phase in the exploration of these long-predicted objects.

Though confirmed discovery of ISOs is quite recent, their utility as targets in the search for technosignatures (historically known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — SETI) has been discussed for many decades. With the upcoming NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the discovery and tracking of such objects is expected to become routine, and thus so must our examination of these objects for possible technosignatures.

Here we review the literature surrounding ISOs as targets for technosignatures, which provides a well-developed motivation for such exploration. We outline four broad classes of technosignatures that are well suited for ISO follow-up, including the type of data needed and the best timing for study.

Given the limitations in the current understanding of ISOs, we show that care must be taken in identifying technosignatures based primarily on comparison to objects in the Solar System. We therefore provide a roadmap for careful and consistent study of the population of ISOs in the hope of identifying technosignatures.

James R. A. Davenport, Sofia Z. Sheikh, Steve Croft, Brian C. Lacki, Jason T. Wright, Chris Lintott, Adam Frank, T. Joseph W. Lazio, Colin Orion Chandler, Andrew P. V. Siemion, Stephen DiKerby, Ellie White, Valeria Garcia Lopez, Emma E. Yu, Maxwell K. Frissell, Peter Yoachim, Naomi Morato, Devanshi Singh, Jinshuo Zhang, Darryl Z. Seligman

Comments: 17 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to journal for peer review, community feedback welcomed
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:2508.16825 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2508.16825v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2508.16825
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Submission history
From: James RA Davenport
[v1] Fri, 22 Aug 2025 22:45:30 UTC (994 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.16825

Astrobiology, SETI,