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JANUSOBSERVATORY

Methods · version 0.2

Transparent before spectacular.

What the Observatory knows, how it knows it, and where the evidence stops.

Scenario status

Project Janus scenarios are self-consistent possibilities for the technosphere—not forecasts, probabilities, or a ranking. Spatial layout, color, and order in this site do not encode likelihood.

Canonical data path

  1. Reported sourceVersioned scholarly paper, exact table or figure locator.
  2. TranscriptionNormalized JSON preserves units, significant digits, ellipses, and notes.
  3. Runtime validationZod schemas reject missing records, malformed cells, and incomplete provenance.
  4. PresentationComponents consume canonical records; scientific values are not component literals.

Observatory model

This release is a categorical lookup, not a speculative telescope simulator. It resolves all ten scenarios across five observing concepts from Technosignature detectability with future missions. A blank figure cell is displayed as “no signature listed.” It never becomes “no technology.”

Distance and integration remain locked to the source study preset because no validated continuous model is available. Atmosphere values come from Table 1. No PDF-digitized spectrum is presented as raw spectral data.

Scenarios10
Mission concepts5
Output typeCategorical

Collapse and recovery

The repository contains the paper’s reported parameters and selected aggregate outcomes: 200 runs per scenario over 1000 years. The paper links the authors’ public technocycles repository at audited commit 910770d. Its notebook fixes the main Monte Carlo seed at 12345, uses 54321 for sensitivity batches, and commits an aggregate CSV. It does not commit per-run trajectories or declare a software/data license, so neither code nor CSV is bundled or used as canonical runtime data. The Observatory implementation remains independent and must never be labeled official Janus code.

Independent validation report

Reimplemented evidence, outside the canonical release.

The generated experiment report is explicitly reimplemented and noncanonical. Its overall pass means that 29 of 29 metric/scenario comparisons with a published target met the recorded tolerance. It does not turn an absent source target into evidence: 11 comparisons remain not_validated.

Evidence kindreimplemented
Canonical statusnoncanonical
Large ensemble20,000 runs

This is an independent check against published comparison targets—not an official author replication. The authors’ code and aggregate data remain unbundled, and no unavailable per-run source trajectories are implied.

ScenarioPublished targetsNo published targetBounded result
S1222/2 pass
S2131/1 pass
S3404/4 pass
S4313/3 pass
S5222/2 pass
S6222/2 pass
S7404/4 pass
S8313/3 pass
S9404/4 pass
S10404/4 pass

Evidence vocabulary

reported
Directly stated in a source.
transcribed
Normalized from a source into canonical data.
derived
Deterministic calculation from sourced inputs.
reimplemented
Independent model based on a published method.
editorial
Observatory explanation or classification.
interpretive
Art-directed extrapolation from scenario prose.
fictional
In-world artifact or narrative content.
model_generated
AI output; never canonical.