New telescope forest sprouts in search for extraterrestrials

HAT CREEK VALLEY – In a meadow of one of Northern California’s pristine national forests, 2,000-pound radio telescopes are popping up like mushrooms.

Made of aluminum and resembling things out of the movie “Contact,” they point to the heavens and wait in silent attention. Scientists hope they will one day detect radio waves sent from a faraway planet.

Thousands of years after mankind first asked one of the most pressing philosophical questions – Are we alone in the universe? – Silicon Valley scientists are poised to bring us closer to an understanding.

The hunt for little green men has moved from Hollywood back lots to the Bay Area’s backyard.

“In many cultures throughout history, we’ve always wondered: Is there anybody else? Are we the only ones who can look up at the universe and wonder? I live in the first generation of humans that can try to answer this,” said Jill Tarter, director of the Center for the the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at the SETI Institute in Mountain View.

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(Full Article: http://www.dailynews.com/glendale/ci_9176083)

Contact with Extraterrestrials within two decades, say astronomers

This type of article really makes me happy. When scientists come forward with such declaration, it shows progress. And I speculate that this type of contact will happen without 2 to 5 years, not 20 years.

Mankind will make contact with intelligent alien life within two decades, leading astronomers claim.

The recent discovery of Earth-like planets outside our solar system and the launch of a major Nasa mission in 2009 has brought extra-terrestrial contact a dramatic step closer.

In a BBC two Horizon documentary broadcast tomorrow night, the American astrophysicist Dr Frank Drake said: “Everything has caused us to become more optimistic.”

The 76-year-old – who founded the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project (SETI) in 1961 – added: “We really believe that in the next 20 years or so, we are going to learn a great deal more about life beyond Earth and very likely we will have detected that life and perhaps even intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy.”

Nearly half a century ago, Dr Drake devised an equation to estimate the number of alien civilisations in the galaxy.

It takes into account seven factors including the rate at which stars are born in the Milky Way, roughly how many have planets, whether they might be habitable and a guess as to how long an intelligent species exists.

Although everyone’s answer to the equation differs, Dr Drake said the average estimate was that 10,000 technologically advanced life-forms exist in the galaxy.

The theory was dismissed by many experts until April last year when a Swiss team discovered the first two planets, called Gliese 581 c and d, outside the Solar System that could support life.

Dr Drake said: “It shows the potential that life-bearing planets exist.”

SETI senior astronomer Dr Seth Shostak, based in California, told Horizon: “There are 200 billion stars just in our galaxy and at least half of them probably have planets (orbiting them), so that’s 100 billion planetary systems with, let’s say, five planets in each system.

“That’s 500 billion planets out there, and bear in mind there are 100 billion other galaxies.

“To think this (the Earth) is the only place where anything interesting is happening, you have got to be really audacious to take that point of view.”

The search for life on other planets will take a huge step forward next year when Nasa launches its Kepler space telescope, which will constantly scan the same 100,000 stars over its entire four-year mission to discover Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones around suns.

Once Kepler identifies the planets most likely to sustain life, the team at SETI will focus its deep-space listening equipment on those solar systems, instead of randomly scanning the outer reaches of space as at present.

(Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk)

SETI’s Search for ET Goes Exponential

SETI’s hunt for ET is revving up to warp speed, thanks largely to an infusion of $25 million from Seattle’s most famous science-fiction fan, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Allen will join scientists from SETI — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — to unveil the Allen Telescope Array devoted to answering the question: Is anyone out there? The observatory consists of an array of 42 radio dishes perched atop a volcanic plateau in Hat Creek, 300 miles northeast of San Francisco.

“It’s the longshot of longshots, but if we did hear a signal from another civilization, that would be world-changing,” said Allen, in an interview with the Seattle Times. Allen’s investment was half the $50 million price tag for the observatory in Hat Creek, Calif.

The first mission for the Allen Telescope Array will be to scan several billion stars across a vast swath of our own Milky Way galaxy, said astronomer Seth Shostak, of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. That broad-brush survey will be followed in the coming years by detailed examinations of a million stars — a quantum leap in coverage of celestial real estate. In the 45 years since scientists first started looking for signals from alien worlds, only about 750 stars have gotten such close scrutiny. Radio telescopes could detect the “leakage” from ordinary broadcasts, or pick up a signal beacon deliberately aimed into space by extraterrestrials.

“This is an exponential increase in speed,” Shostak said. “And it covers much more of the radio dial, which is important because ET never told us where to look for his broadcasts.”

The array will also help push the frontiers of conventional astronomy, said Leo Blitz, director of radio astronomy for the University of California, Berkeley, which helped foot the bill. Radio telescopes are a staple of astronomy. All hot gases emit radio waves, so scientists analyze the emissions to glean information about objects that can’t be seen, like black holes and dark matter. Radio waves also allow astronomers to peer through dusty regions of space, and provide different views of stars and other galactic structures.

“We can see a larger piece of the sky at once than other radio telescopes — and we can make better images than anybody,” he said. The telescope’s power will enable more detailed study of pulsars, black holes, dark matter, gravity waves and phenomena not yet dreamed of, he said. “Throughout the history of astronomy, whenever you build an instrument with new capabilities, you make serendipitous discoveries.”

Allen was first drawn into SETI by the late celebrity astronomer Carl Sagan, who persuaded the Seattle billionaire to keep the program going after federal money dried up.

Allen’s interest in space goes back to his childhood and the Seattle library where he first came across “Rocket Ship Galileo,” Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi classic about whiz kids who build a moonship. As one of the world’s wealthiest men, he has bankrolled a science-fiction museum in Seattle and backed the winning entry in the $10 million X-prize competition for manned flights to the edge of space.

The goal is to boost the telescope’s power even more by expanding the array to 350 dishes, at a cost of an additional $41 million. Until that happens, the telescope won’t break much new ground in conventional astronomy, said University of Washington astronomer Woody Sullivan.

As leader of the University of Washington’s astrobiology program, Sullivan is a big believer in alien life forms, but says they’re more likely to be microbes on Jupiter’s moons or Mars than intelligent beings.

(Source: http://www.dailygalaxy.com)

That’s another serious waste of money. The worst in all this, is that they are likely not going to tell the population when they find something. It has been reported already that they had signals coming from out of space and it never reached the public.

SETI’s Search for ET Goes Exponential

SETI’s hunt for ET is revving up to warp speed, thanks largely to an infusion of $25 million from Seattle’s most famous science-fiction fan, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Allen will join scientists from SETI — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — to unveil the Allen Telescope Array devoted to answering the question: Is anyone out there? The observatory consists of an array of 42 radio dishes perched atop a volcanic plateau in Hat Creek, 300 miles northeast of San Francisco.

“It’s the longshot of longshots, but if we did hear a signal from another civilization, that would be world-changing,” said Allen, in an interview with the Seattle Times. Allen’s investment was half the $50 million price tag for the observatory in Hat Creek, Calif.

The first mission for the Allen Telescope Array will be to scan several billion stars across a vast swath of our own Milky Way galaxy, said astronomer Seth Shostak, of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. That broad-brush survey will be followed in the coming years by detailed examinations of a million stars — a quantum leap in coverage of celestial real estate. In the 45 years since scientists first started looking for signals from alien worlds, only about 750 stars have gotten such close scrutiny. Radio telescopes could detect the “leakage” from ordinary broadcasts, or pick up a signal beacon deliberately aimed into space by extraterrestrials.

“This is an exponential increase in speed,” Shostak said. “And it covers much more of the radio dial, which is important because ET never told us where to look for his broadcasts.”

The array will also help push the frontiers of conventional astronomy, said Leo Blitz, director of radio astronomy for the University of California, Berkeley, which helped foot the bill. Radio telescopes are a staple of astronomy. All hot gases emit radio waves, so scientists analyze the emissions to glean information about objects that can’t be seen, like black holes and dark matter. Radio waves also allow astronomers to peer through dusty regions of space, and provide different views of stars and other galactic structures.

“We can see a larger piece of the sky at once than other radio telescopes — and we can make better images than anybody,” he said. The telescope’s power will enable more detailed study of pulsars, black holes, dark matter, gravity waves and phenomena not yet dreamed of, he said. “Throughout the history of astronomy, whenever you build an instrument with new capabilities, you make serendipitous discoveries.”

Allen was first drawn into SETI by the late celebrity astronomer Carl Sagan, who persuaded the Seattle billionaire to keep the program going after federal money dried up.

Allen’s interest in space goes back to his childhood and the Seattle library where he first came across “Rocket Ship Galileo,” Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi classic about whiz kids who build a moonship. As one of the world’s wealthiest men, he has bankrolled a science-fiction museum in Seattle and backed the winning entry in the $10 million X-prize competition for manned flights to the edge of space.

The goal is to boost the telescope’s power even more by expanding the array to 350 dishes, at a cost of an additional $41 million. Until that happens, the telescope won’t break much new ground in conventional astronomy, said University of Washington astronomer Woody Sullivan.

As leader of the University of Washington’s astrobiology program, Sullivan is a big believer in alien life forms, but says they’re more likely to be microbes on Jupiter’s moons or Mars than intelligent beings.

(Source: http://www.dailygalaxy.com)

That’s another serious waste of money. The worst in all this, is that they are likely not going to tell the population when they find something. It has been reported already that they had signals coming from out of space and it never reached the public.