British scientists are to make a concerted effort to look for alien life among the stars. There are billions of planets out there. It behooves mankind to keep a listening ear open to signals.
In the latest BBC News, academics from 11 institutions have set up a network to co-ordinate their Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (Seti). The English Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, will act as patron. The group is asking funding agencies for a small - about £1m a year - sum of money to support listening time on radio telescopes and for data analysis. It would also help pay for research that considered new ways to try to find aliens.
Currently, most Seti work is done in the US and is funded largely through private donation.
A University of St Andrews researcher told BBC News, "I don't know whether [aliens] are out there, but I'm desperate to find out. It's quite possible that we're alone in the Universe. And think about the implications of that: if we're alone in the Universe then the whole purpose in the Universe is in us. If we're not alone, that's interesting in a very different way."
In the latest BBC News, academics from 11 institutions have set up a network to co-ordinate their Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (Seti). The English Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, will act as patron. The group is asking funding agencies for a small - about £1m a year - sum of money to support listening time on radio telescopes and for data analysis. It would also help pay for research that considered new ways to try to find aliens.
Currently, most Seti work is done in the US and is funded largely through private donation.
A University of St Andrews researcher told BBC News, "I don't know whether [aliens] are out there, but I'm desperate to find out. It's quite possible that we're alone in the Universe. And think about the implications of that: if we're alone in the Universe then the whole purpose in the Universe is in us. If we're not alone, that's interesting in a very different way."
A Jodrell associate director said they are thinking of doing serendipitous searches. If the telescopes were studying quasars, for example, they could piggy-back off that and analyze the data to look for a different type of signal - not the natural astrophysical signal that the quasar astronomer was interested in, but something in the noise that one might imagine could be associated with aliens. This approach would provide Seti research almost for free.
In 1998-2003, the Jodrell bank, and its 76m Lovell radio telescope, set up Project Phoenix. It searched for signals from about 1,000 nearby stars. The Californian Seti Institute's effort ultimately found nothing.
Jodrell has since been updated, linking it via fibre optics into a 217km-long array with six other telescopes across England. Known as eMerlin, this system would be a far more powerful tool to scan the skies for alien transmissions.
And Jodrell itself is the management HQ for the forthcoming Square Kilometre Array, a giant next-generation radio observatory to be built in South Africa and Australia. It will have incredible power, not only to screen out interference from TV and phone signals here on Earth, but to resolve very faint signals at vast distances. It has been said the SKA could detect an airport radar on an alien world 50 light-years away.
One attraction of Seti is the great potential for "citizen science" involvement. If you asked all the people coming out of a science fiction movie whether they'd pledge money from the tax of that movie to determine if any of what they'd just seen was for real, most would agree.
Searching for extraterrestrial life using whale song technology. Source.
In 1998-2003, the Jodrell bank, and its 76m Lovell radio telescope, set up Project Phoenix. It searched for signals from about 1,000 nearby stars. The Californian Seti Institute's effort ultimately found nothing.
Jodrell has since been updated, linking it via fibre optics into a 217km-long array with six other telescopes across England. Known as eMerlin, this system would be a far more powerful tool to scan the skies for alien transmissions.
And Jodrell itself is the management HQ for the forthcoming Square Kilometre Array, a giant next-generation radio observatory to be built in South Africa and Australia. It will have incredible power, not only to screen out interference from TV and phone signals here on Earth, but to resolve very faint signals at vast distances. It has been said the SKA could detect an airport radar on an alien world 50 light-years away.
One attraction of Seti is the great potential for "citizen science" involvement. If you asked all the people coming out of a science fiction movie whether they'd pledge money from the tax of that movie to determine if any of what they'd just seen was for real, most would agree.
Searching for extraterrestrial life using whale song technology. Source.
Scientists have long worked on a way to transmit radio transmissions to contact an extraterrestrial intelligent being. One early aspect of that kind of analysis is known as Zipf's Law, named after a linguist who plotted the occurrence frequency of English letters in novels. The most-frequent letter occurred 10 times more frequently then the second-most-used, letter; the third-most-used letter, one-tenth as often as the second, and so on, from the letter "e" and then "t" to the least-used letter, "q." He also plotted this for Chinese characters, English words, Russian phonemes and so on.
It turns out that Zipf's Law appears to describe a distribution of signals that is necessary to make a language.
They applied these techniques to humpback whales, in part because they are also a socially complex species, and in part because they rely — as the dolphins do — on vocal communication more than gestural or facial expressions. This species also had a global communication system millions of years before humans did.
It turns out that Zipf's Law appears to describe a distribution of signals that is necessary to make a language.
They applied these techniques to humpback whales, in part because they are also a socially complex species, and in part because they rely — as the dolphins do — on vocal communication more than gestural or facial expressions. This species also had a global communication system millions of years before humans did.
These animals also resembled humans in they way they dealt with noise. When one is talking on a phone line with static, the speaker has to slow down the rate of words in order to insure that the listener gets all the words. We also found this to be the case for humpback whales in the presence of boat noise — they slowed down the rate at which they transmitted signals to each other. They were communicating to each other while making bubble nets to trap herring. So what was going on here? An analogy can help; when your copy machine is low on toner, and you don't want to make another copy, you can fill in missing letters and words using the rules of spelling and grammar. This works as long as you are not missing too many words in a row, because if that happens you cannot use rules and context to recover missing words. Humpback whales also got the gist of the message without having to hear it all the way through.
In addition to radio searches, optical SETI is now becoming more widespread. Radio SETI is looking for narrow-band transmissions. Optical SETI, however, relies on the detection of nanosecond pulses of light.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a fascinating field and encompasses astrophysics to animal communications, and from paleontology to quantum mechanics. At present, it is symbolized by a radio telescope, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
However, most of the public's interest in astronomy derives from its interest in finding life in space. My husband insists that there must be many other forms of intelligence. He says it's ridiculous to see ourselves as special. I hold onto the thought that God created man in his image. Although God may have created other forms of life, the bible assurance makes man special.
In addition to radio searches, optical SETI is now becoming more widespread. Radio SETI is looking for narrow-band transmissions. Optical SETI, however, relies on the detection of nanosecond pulses of light.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a fascinating field and encompasses astrophysics to animal communications, and from paleontology to quantum mechanics. At present, it is symbolized by a radio telescope, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
However, most of the public's interest in astronomy derives from its interest in finding life in space. My husband insists that there must be many other forms of intelligence. He says it's ridiculous to see ourselves as special. I hold onto the thought that God created man in his image. Although God may have created other forms of life, the bible assurance makes man special.
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