To detect potential intelligent life beyond, you must first expand your network using a range of techniques and technologies.
Any “fishing expedition” for ET involves a close examination of life in extreme environments here. Soilto help us recognize signatures we might find Anthem or a deep dive into the icy crust of Jupiter’s moon, Europe. The search could also be blended with the use of space-based telescopes for examination. Earth-like planets revolves around their house stars. There’s also the proverbial ear to the cosmos, using radio telescopes to capture bustling interstellar civilizations or perhaps look for laser pulse communications from extraterrestrials.
These and other efforts are actively pursued by the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, the high-tech heartland of Silicon Valley. More than a hundred institute scientists are intensively conducting research. astronomy And astrophysics, astrobiologyas well as outer planets, climate and bio-geology and Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
Relating to: SETI scientists launch major new hunt for intelligent aliens
Space.com sat down with SETI Institute President and CEO Bill Diamond for an exclusive, mind-blowing intimate discussion about the growing evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.
Spoiler alert! It’s not so much the tried and true and tired question “Are we alone?” It’s more like “how crowded is it?” A question like.
early stages
There’s a lot going on these days in terms of researching and trying to understand potential extraterrestrial life. Universesaid Diamond.
“For most of the first few decades of SETI, the effort was pretty minimal in searching with fairly ‘insensitive’ instruments in fairly narrow parts of the radio spectrum in random parts of the sky. So there’s almost nothing that could be considered a comprehensive effort,” Elmas said.
But even today, SETI studies are still in their infancy in many respects. But with the increasing number of gadgets and technologies around the world, more is happening. “There is a comprehensive, expanded effort going on right now,” Diamond said.
COSMIC collaboration
For example, there is the Commensal Open Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence – mercifully abbreviated as COSMIC SETI.
All 27 antennas Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico has been equipped with new equipment to perform 24/7 SETI observations as part of a collaboration between the SETI Institute and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the group that operates the VLA.
Yes, that’s the same VLA featured in the 1997 sci-fi movie “Contact,” where actress Jodie Foster was outfitted with a tight-fitting stereo headset. Diamond noted that in reality VLA was never used for SETI, but now it is.
Detectable signatures
“COSMIC is truly the most comprehensive SETI search on a single device in history. It’s very exciting,” Diamond said, giving the COSMIC team access to a complete, independent copy of the data streams from the entire VLA.
COSMIC will analyze data for the possible existence of “technosignatures,” detectable signatures and signals that scream the existence of distant advanced civilizations.
In scientific circles, technosignatures are viewed as a subset of a much more established search for “biosignatures,” evidence that microbial or other primitive life is on the loose in some of the billions of living things. outer planets We now know it exists.
newly increased
“There are now more events happening around the world for classical radio SETI than ever before,” Diamond said. This increase also includes the SETI Institute’s newly expanded Allen Telescope Array located northeast of San Francisco. It was named for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s generous financial support of the facility in its early stages.
Diamond adds that the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) antenna has been redesigned and is now equipped with high-end computers, signal processors and other electronics, making it much faster than ever before. “The instrument is performing at a level it has never seen since it was made. This is all fairly new in the last two to three years.”
One of the outcomes of ATA was that SETI Institute scientists used it to investigate powerful Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), a puzzling phenomenon that requires explanation.
charitable gift
A passionate supporter of ATA’s revision was Franklin Antonio, co-founder of Qualcomm, a communications chip company. Antonio’s support as the institute’s technical advisor continues with his $200 million philanthropic donation to the SETI Institute following his death last May.
This bequest sparked an action plan that will enhance the institute’s multidisciplinary, multicenter research, education and outreach structure, Diamond said.
Also on the institute’s agenda is to solicit and evaluate ideas from SETI researchers anywhere in the world to tap into the pool of money for things like technology, software, or to conduct an experiment.
“If we like what you do, we will finance it,” Diamond said. “For now, we will replace NASA as the only place in the world where you can submit proposals to conduct a SETI study.”
these three words
Take it back time Fast forward to Columbus Day in 1992, when NASA launched an official, more intensive SETI program. But less than a year later, Congress short-circuited the program.
Is it time for the government to re-embrace the search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
“Yes, absolutely,” Diamond replied. He said there are three science questions that NASA is pioneering: How does the universe work? How did we get here? Are we alone?
Diamond said NASA management uses these three words in nearly every public speech: Are we alone?
“We all want to know. NASA clearly wants to know because science is one of its priorities,” Diamond said. “So isn’t it time they got back to the business of answering that question?”
Planets are everywhere
NASA’s own Kepler space telescope served as the space agency’s first planet-seeking mission. nine years deep space Diamond emphasized that scoping shows that our galaxy contains billions of exoplanets. “It told us that planets are everywhere and most of them are potentially habitable.”
NASA SETI work is slowly starting to fade away, Diamond said. A NASA-funded grant to a scientist at the SETI Institute uses observations from the space agency’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The aim is to clean possible technosignatures from TESS data with the help of artificial intelligence/machine learning tools.
“So yeah, I think the winds of change are blowing a little bit in favor of the government getting back into this. And I think they need to step up and do it,” Diamond said.
neighborhood watch
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With all the SETI research in motion, how ready are we for the door-knocking neighborhood watch explanation?
“The clear answer to that question is no; although it depends on what the answer is, we’re not ready,” Diamond said. He added that it was only a matter of time before this question would be answered at one level or another.
Diamond said we need to start thinking about how to convey this knowledge and its implications to society, religion, politics, technology and governments.
“With all these technologies, methods, and instruments looking in different directions, I think it’s getting closer and closer,” Diamond concluded.