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Prospects for Astrobiology and Technosignature Searches with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time

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arXiv:2606.00574v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will map sources in multiband colour--variability space. We present a prototype coherence-based framework for astrobiology and technosignature searches, in which candidates are treated as structured departures from natural astrophysical manifolds rather than isolated photometric outliers. We illustrate the framework with three simulated cases: five Kuiper Belt Object (KBO)...

arXiv:2606.00574v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will map sources in multiband colour--variability space. We present a prototype coherence-based framework for astrobiology and technosignature searches, in which candidates are treated as structured departures from natural astrophysical manifolds rather than isolated photometric outliers. We illustrate the framework with three simulated cases: five Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) surface/activity states, a grid of 649 synthetic exoplanet spectra with vegetation-red-edge-like (VRE) perturbations, and 500 synthetic multiband light curves, each projected into LSST-like observable space and analysed through colour geometry, chromatic variability, and cross-band coherence. Key results include a full-colour Mahalanobis distance $D\approx5.1$ for the weak-coma KBO state (${\sim}5\sigma$ in the five-dimensional colour vector), an indicative VRE coherence threshold at $f_{\rm crit}\approx0.13$, and an idealised stacking forecast reaching $5\sigma$ under optimistic assumptions. We show, using a small Gaia~DR3 stellar sample, that stellar colour and photometric stability may inform the prioritisation of Galactic regions for applying such coherence diagnostics.
Technosignature Searches (PERSON) the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (ORG) VRE (ORG) LSST (ORG) Mahalanobis (ORG) KBO (ORG) Gaia (ORG) Galactic (ORG)
Originally published by arXiv Physics Read original →