Transcript SETI

SETI
The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence
Science and Religion in School Unit 4b
Why bother looking?
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Answer to some fundamental questions
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Sharing of knowledge
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Medical
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Scientific
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Technological
Helping Mankind out of its current problems
Would they be any help?
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Have been through the same problems as us and survived
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Open to question
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Why need they have had the same problems?
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Why need their solutions work for us?
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Why should they tell us?
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Perhaps they got through by good fortune
Where to look?
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Our own solar system?
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Highly unlikely - no evidence and space probes
have been most places
‘lower’ forms of life are a different matter
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Mars
Europa
Mars
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Traditionally thought of as a
good candidate
Evidence of water on surface
Atmosphere (thin)
Historical (Percival Lowell)
Percival Lowell
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Thought Mars was inhabited and covered in
canals
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May 22nd 1894 Boston Scientific Society
“The most self evident explanation from the
markings themselves is probably the true one;
namely, that in them we are looking upon the
results of the work of some sort of intelligent
beings”
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He had not looked at Mars through a telescope by
this stage
Set up an observatory in Flagstaff Arizona 1894
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Lowell studied the
canals and the
seasonal variations in
the ice caps
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Martians using the ice
from the poles to
irrigate desert areas of
the planet
Surface of Mars
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Now we have been to the surface
with robot probes (since the 1970s)
We know what the surface is like
No canals!
However, we do think that there
was once water on Mars
This water is now locked in as frost
under the surface
Evidence for water
The Face on Mars
Europa
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A ‘dark horse’ candidate for life in
our solar system
Surface appears to be ice
Liquid ocean under the ice?
Thin atmosphere detected
containing oxygen
Possibly life has evolved in the
relative warmth of the ocean
Elsewhere?
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Growing evidence for planets
round other stars
Around 100 ‘extra-solar’ planets
have now been observed
If planets exist round other stars,
then the basic conditions for life
being found elsewhere seems
much more likely.
The search is now on for ‘Earthlike’ planets.
How do we look?
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Search for radio transmissions
from the stars
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Hard to separate from natural
sources
There are a lot of stars to listen to!
Beam a single out from Earth and
rely on them hearing us
Why nothing so far?
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Bad luck
Lack of interest in us
No one there
Consequences for Theology
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Theology needs to incorporate the possibility of
life elsewhere in the universe
Could impact on a variety of doctrines and faiths
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The Fall
The Incarnation
Re-incarnation
Creationism
Fundamentalism
Final thinking point
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Alien life on Earth
What if we were to create artificial intelligence in our
computers?