A back-bencher US senator decided to get himself some
publicity in 1991 and chose NASA's SETI (Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program as an easy
target. Saying it was a waste of money to look for little
green men, he got the program canceled.
This occurred despite the fact that the project, the
High Resolution Microwave Survey, was a thoroughly
refereed program with support across the scientific
spectrum and its budget was actually very modest.
In the wake of this sad affair, non-governmental
and amateur programs arose to continue the effort.
Most of the SETI efforts rely on public donations to
fund at least some of what the NASA could have done.
This included the Phoenix
project that rose from the ashes of the NASA program.
In addition, several amateur groups have sprung
up to carry out their own SETI programs. As it is in
astronomy,
it is quite feasible for amateurs to make significant
contributions in this area. The prime challenge of SETI
is to monitor a vast number of channels in a vast number
of directions. The more people that are looking, the
better the chance of finding something.
The conventional SETI technique is to use radio telescopes
to monitor the water hole, i.e. the radio frequency
range between the emissions of hydrogen (H) and hydroxyl
(OH) where cosmic background noise and absorption in
the atmosphere are both low. Also, since these emissions
are common throughout the universe, it would be a logical
range for other civilizations to choose to send out
a signal.
An exciting new approach is to look in the visible
spectrum for coherent light signals. This is based on
the assumption that laser light could be used by other
civilizations for communications.
A unique and exciting project for amateurs is SETI@home.
Data from radio telescopes will be distributed over
the Internet to thousands of participants who will have
special programs running as screensavers that analyze
the data when the computers are not otherwise in use.
SETILive
This citizen scientist project was created by Jill Tartar
of the SETI
Institute (see below), with resources of her TED
Prize, and Zooniverse,
It invives members of the public to assist in analyzing
radio telescope data for signs of extraterrestrial signals.
This is done visually rather than with computer software
as in the SETI@home
(see below) participation project.
SETI
Institute
The SETI Institute of Mountain View California supports
and runs many projects
such as the Allen
Telescope Array. Check out the list of past projects
such as Project
Phoenix, which continued work at the Arecibo Telescope
when NASA funding was shut off.
Earth
Speaks
A program sponsored by the SETI
Institutein
which people can submit suggestions on what message,
if any, should be transmitted back after a signal from
an extraterrestrial civilization is detected:
SETI@home
Analyze actual SETI data with your screensaver. The
huge amount of data collected by SETI experiments must
be analyzed within limited budgets. So the idea of SETI@home
is to take advantage of thousands of idling home computers
to do the analysis.
Data files will be downloaded over the Internet and
a special screensaver program will analyze the data
during otherwise idle times on the computers. After
a week or two, results will then be uploaded and new
data obtained.
Project
SERENDIP at the University of California scans 168
million radio channels with the Arecebo attenna in Puerto
Rico. This data will be fed to thousands of SETI@home
participants.
setiQuest
A project that opens up SETI related software to the
open source development process. It's also hope that
this will encourage new SETI software to be developed
in an open source manner as well.
Project
BAMBI
BAMBI (Bob and Mike's Big Investment) is a amateur
SETI project by Bob Lash and Mike Fremont. They will use
one 3.1-million-channel radio telescope in California
and one in Colorado, separated by 1000 miles to reduce
local interference.
COSETI
Stuart Kingley of Columbus, Ohio runs his Columbus Optical
SETI Observatory out of his own budget. He searches
for extremely fast (nanosecond) optical pulses as well
as continuous laser signals that could indicate optical
communication signals from extraterrestrials.
See this site for possible amateur participation in
this type of search, which requires conventional optical
telescopes and photometers.
Allen
Telescope Array
Funded by Paul G. Allen and Nathan P. Myhrvold, this
project of the SETI Institute and Univ. California Berkeley
combines the signals from a large array of low cost
satellite TV type dishes to provide a powerful telescope
dedicated to SETI. The ATA will eventually have over
350 dishes. The ATA began operations in 2007 with 42
dishes.
In the spring of 2011, the ATA operations were suspended
due to a lack of funds. The UC Berkeley group that planned
to use the ATA for radio astronomy projects did not
obtain sufficient funding to follow through on its committments
to the ATA. In response, the SETI Institute set up a
fundraising program called Setistars.
In August of 2011, they had surpassed their $200,000
goal and were planning to resume observations with the
ATA.
In December 2011 they resumed operations using public
donations and money from the USAF, which seeks to investigate
use of the array for space debris studies.
Amateur
SETI
This site supports "individuals interested in amateur
SETI and radio astronomy. Here you will find files, links,
and programs to support the development of the hobby."
The
SETI League
The SETI League, based in Little Ferry, New Jersey,
is organizing several amateur SETI projects. Project
Argus currently includes 64 amateur radio telescope
stations (as of Nov. 28, 1998) and hopes to reach eventually
5000 systems around the world monitoring selected frequencies.
The amateur telescopes have ranged in cost from hundreds
of dollars to several thousand.
IAA
SETI Permanent Study Group: Rio Scale
A scale - 1 to 10 - that attempts to "quantify
the impact of any public announcement regarding evidence
of extraterrestrial intelligence.
SETI
at the Planetary Society
The Planetary
Society supports SETI activity such as Project BETA
(Billion-channel Extra-Terrestrial Assay) and Project
META II (million-channel Extra-Terrestrial Assay) run
by Paul Horowitz of Harvard.
SETI Australia
Centre
This scientific group in Australia does professional
research related to SETI but also makes significant
efforts to involve the public. Their current project
is the Southern
SERENDIP.
S.E.T.I
Research & Community Development Institute
Learn about SETI at this Australian site. Contains a huge
amount of information and resources about SETI. Introductory
material is accessible by non-technical readers.
Fermi Paradox
The famous physicist Enrico Fermi asked the basic question
about the possibility of extraterrestrial life "Where
are they?" That is, considering the long age of
the galaxy, it would seem that ET's should have contacted
us by now. Here are some articles and resources concerning
this question:
Drake Equation
This formula developed by Frank Drake in 1960 attempts
to provide a quantitative estimate of the number of
planets in the Milky Way that could have extraterrestrial
civilizations.
Messages to ET
If a SETI signal was received, how would we respond?
The question of how to compose messages to send to ET
has been seriously examined by various people and even
conferences on the topic have been held to obtain inputs
from a broad spectrum of scientists, artists, philosphers,
etc.
Faces
from Earth! - organization devoted to communication
with extraterrestrial intelligence
provide information on Messages from Earth
- history, rationale, possible effects on
humanity
organize events to educate the public about
space and astronomy and to promote deep space
missions
compile next messages to put on board for
future deep space missions - including a holographic
library of photographic faces of people and
Mosaic
Earth
Implications of Alien Signals
The social impact of a contact with an extraterrestrial
civilization would be enormous. There is a lot of speculation
as to what exactly that impact would be. Here are some
resources about this.
CONTACT:
Cultures of the Imagination
CONTACT is a unique interdisciplinary conference which
brings together some of the foremost international
social and space scientists, science fiction writers
and artists to exchange ideas, stimulate new perspectives
and encourage serious, creative speculation about
humanity's future ... onworld and offworld.
Interesting Signals
While various SETI searches have never claimed to see
a clearly artificially produced transmission from another
star system, there have occasionally been signals that
were not trivially explained away (e.g. as satellite
or other human generated transmissions.)
Here are some articles about such anomalous signasl:
Society
of Amateur Radio Astronomers
This group of over 400 members was founded in 1981 and
is devoted to radio astronomy by amateurs. Even with
small dishes, amateurs can study solar activity, meteors,
and even do imaging of celestial radio sources. Although
not an emphasis of the organization, some members participate
in SETI projects.
RadioScience
Observing by Joseph Carr
Joseph Carr's book (Howard Sams/PROMPT Publishing, tel:
1-317-298-5400) focuses on information for the amateur
who is interested in radio from space and the atmosphere.
Articles
Detecting extraterrestrial civilizations via their
light pollution:
"this type of research may well be within
the realm of the contributing amateur astronomer.
Currently the search for signs of extra-terrestrial
intelligence are limited to radio and the search
for laser pulse which demands specialized equipment.
'For the moment, there is no project to apply
this idea. If it the idea turns into a specific
(SETI) observing program, a number of collaborations
would be welcome!'"
Seti
UNIVERSE
Lots of SETI news, info, forum, links, etc.
Sky
& Telescope's SETI Page
Links to SETI articles including updated versions
of articles from the Dec. 1998 special issue dedicated
to SETI. Maintained by Alan MacRobert.
SETI
range calculator online program by Eric Johnston
at Scotland's
Seti that calculates the range of the radio signals
that might be sent by extraterrestrials based on the
size of the transmission dish, power, frequency, and
bandwidth.
