Help us finding vanishing stars and ET
My name is Beatriz Villarroel. I am an astrophysicist. I am also the leader of the Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project. In the VASCO project, we search for sources in the sky that unexpectedly appear or vanish. These may be new phenomena warranting follow-up observations and study. Vanishing stars are intriguing, as they could point towards a myriad of exciting new astrophysical phenomena and even be a sign of advanced alien technology. The VASCO project also looks for other alien ”technosignatures”, e.g. solar reflections from non-human artificial objects in orbit around Earth.
The VASCO project consists of ~40 scientists over the whole globe. Most of our scientists work on the project in their free time. Since 2021, we are running a citizen science project where everybody can participate in searching for interesting candidates. At the moment of writing, we have thousands of candidates: each must be carefully investigated and followed up on with large telescopes to understand its origin.
We need your financial support to continue the VASCO project and give it a boost to its maximum potential the coming five years. We are now in our most exciting data analysis time, when we expect many fascinating findings.
With the money we will:
• fund the researchers so that they can dedicate their work time to VASCO
• computer resources
• developing citizen science activities that we have developed together with amateur astronomy associations.
Please support the VASCO project and help us find ET.
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More about the VASCO project:
