Transcript Document

The SETI Institute
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Project Phoenix
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“Measuring a 1,000 feet across, the Arecibo Radio
Telescope in Puerto Rico is currently used by Project
Phoenix during two three-week sessions each year.
Project Phoenix is the world's most sensitive search for
extraterrestrial intelligence.”
“Phoenix doesn't scan
the whole sky. Rather, it
scrutinizes the vicinities
of nearby, sun-like
stars. Such stars are
most likely to host longlived planets capable of
supporting life. We
naturally include stars
that are known to have
planets. There are
about one thousand
stars targeted for
observation by Project
Phoenix. All are within
200 light-years
distance.”
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“Most SETI experiments of the
past have relied on existing
radio telescopes. While this
allows such searches to be
conducted on quite large
instruments (for example, the
mammoth 305 m Arecibo dish,
in Puerto Rico), the amount of
telescope time available for
the search is necessarily
restricted.”
The ATA will permit SETI scientists
with access to the telescope 24 hours
per day, seven days a week and
provide for the search of multiple
target stars simultaneously.
As a result, the ATA will speed
up SETI targeted searching by
a factor of at least 100.
Gregorian system.
A secondary mirror that
bounces incoming radio
signals collected by the
large, primary reflector, back
to the feed horn where they
are then amplified and sent
to the control buildings.
Optical SETI
“Scientists from the University of California's Lick Observatory, the SETI
Institute (Mountain View, California), UC Santa Cruz, and UC Berkeley are
coupling the Lick Observatory's 40-inch Nickel Telescope with a new pulsedetection system capable of finding laser beacons from civilizations many
light-years distant.”
"This is perhaps the most sensitive
optical SETI search yet undertaken.”
Frank Drake
On
Optical SETI
“One great
advantage of
optical SETI is that
there's no terrestrial
interference. It's an
exciting new field.”
"This is different. We are
looking for very brief but
powerful pulses of laser light
from other planetary systems,
rather than the steady whine
of a radio transmitter."
Unlike radio telescopes, optical SETI
necessitates deliberate signaling by Ets in
the direction of our solar system.
“This new
experiment is unique
in exploiting three
light detectors
(photomultipliers) to
search for bright
pulses that arrive in
a short period of
time (less than a
billionth of a
second).”
Shelley Wright, an undergraduate physics student at UC Santa Cruz.
Astronomers expect the optical approach will produce a “clean experiment
that can be run automatically, and for which the results will be far less
ambiguous.”
So far, the experiment at Lick has examined around 300 individual star
systems and a few star clusters. They intend to continue the search at
least on a weekly basis.
The notion of searching the heavens for laser flashes is not new. It
is attributed to, to UC Berkeley physicist Charles Townes about 40
years ago. Townes was a recipient of the Nobel Prize for inventing
the laser. Radio astronomy was a more mature technology,
however, and this optical technique wasn't applied until a few years
ago.
“We ought to look for these flashing
lights.”
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More than 600 stars have been observed, for approximately 10 minutes.
"Those are just the
nearby stars, only a tiny
fraction of the galaxy. This
is all unexplored territory,
but optical searches are
definitely the new kid on
the block and they're
proving to be very
interesting.”
- Seth Shostak
Interstellar Message Composition
Once contact has been made with ET, what then?
Do we reply?
What do we say?
How much do we reveal?
HOW do we say it?
Lost for words in space
The possibility of communicating with aliens raises one tricky question: what on Earth
should we say to them? Seth Shostak has a few suggestions
Thursday March 24, 2005
The Guardian
Most of the truly weird items on eBay's electronic shelves are either aberrant or tasteless.
However, a recent item offered by Deep Space Communications Network, a Florida
consortium of telecommunication engineers, exceeded even today's standards for the
bizarre. The Cape Canaveral firm offered to broadcast a personal message to aliens.
The deal was simple: the winning bidder would supply information that Deep Space
Network would electronically encode and beam to the stars. This was everyman's
opportunity to serve up an alien audience with personal poetry, photos of the cat, or
anything else deemed worthy of galactic distribution.
Surprisingly, the winning bid, at $1,225, came not from a flamboyant individual, but from
Craigslist, an internet site that posts classified adverts. The ads include items for sale,
pitches for romance, and listings of those seeking work. Presumably, Craigslist felt that the
chance of decent employment would be boosted if alien beings had access to earthly
resumés. At last count, 36,000 ads had been queued for broadcast.
The Universal
Language?
Math and science as a starting point
But does math tell ET anything about US?
“Although math and science
might provide a sort of ‘Cosmic
Rosetta Stone,’ allowing
civilizations to understand one
another because of partially
shared knowledge, would they
provide a good foundation for
communicating something about
ourselves and our cultures?”
Douglas Vakoch
“How do we
communicate our
high-level concepts,
that is cultural ones,
which are our own
most original
features?”
“How would we explain something about human psychology or describe
our sense of ethics? How would we describe some of the ways that
humans interact with one another, or some of humanity’s highest values?”
Misanthropology
Seth Shostak says,
Shh. . . Just listen.
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SETI @ Home
“The idea behind SETI@home is to take advantage of the unused
processing cycles of personal computers.”
This is not part of the SETI
Institute, but uses data
collected with the Arecibo
Radio Telescope, in Puerto
Rico, as part of Project
SERENDIP. SETI is a
supporter of SERENDIP.
SETI @ Home Geek
Possible
societal
effects of
a SETI
success
“There have been frequent predictions that this announcement would be
the most spectacular news story of all time. Polls suggest that the majority
of Americans already believe in the existence of extraterrestrial beings.”
“However, conditioned by
the media's emphasis on
UFO's, the public might
expect a "message". This
expectation might not be
immediately fulfilled. The
primary goal of Project
Phoenix is to find the
signal; to uncover and
possibly decipher a
message could require
the development of
additional telescope and
receiving equipment.”
“The long-term effects are difficult to predict.
Analogy is often made to Copernicus' dramatic
new cosmology, which deposed Earth from its
throne at the center of the universe. Another oftcited historical analog is Charles Darwin's
celebrated hypothesis on biological evolution. To
the extent that such analogies are applicable,
they suggest more of a gradual change in world
view than a dramatic upset in the day-to-day
conduct of society.”
Life in the Universe
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By Shannon Gleason
26 April 2005
Honors 240
On the Nature of Things
Dr. Timothy Shanahan
Information & quotations taken from SETI Institute website, private interview & research.
Many thanks to Dr. Douglas Vakoch