1996A&A...306..141M

A directed search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has been carried out using the IRAM 30m telescope. Following a suggestion by Kardashev (1979), the search was conducted at the spin-flip line of the lightest atom, namely positronium, at 203GHz. Most of the 17 targets are mature stars with excess infrared radiation, which might be the waste heat of a power-rich technological civilisation. The rest frame of the cosmic background radiation was chosen as the velocity frame. The spectral resolution used was 9.7kHz. From the noise level, which was determined by the limited telescope time and weather conditions, the upper limit for the power of artificial omnidirectional transmitters at the positronium line frequency is of order 10¹⁵W. The relevance of this non-detection is discussed.