Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence
You can read this article on The Starset Society:
http://thestarsetsociety.org/seti-search/
No, it’s not science fiction, because the Voyager spacecraft have been traveling with our gold discs containing our messages since 1977. We sent them out to find us, but SETI is about anybody finding us. An intelligent life form beyond our Earth. And sure enough, NASA has something to do with it too. =)
Even in ancient times, there were theories that life could exist on any celestial body. Then, with the development of the heliocentric worldview (Copernicus – everything revolves around the Sun, the Moon revolves around the Earth, and the Earth revolves around its own axis) Giordano Bruno (1548, Nola – February 17, 1600, Rome) a monk, philosopher, astronomer was who gave voice to the theory that the Universe, space and time are infinite. Consequently, an infinite number of galaxies, stars, planets, life and gods can exist on them. The Inquisition declared him a heretic for this and other reasons and burned him at the stake.
With the development of technology, the research of extraterrestrial life has become a science, although the story is still quite divisive to this day. We primarily research using radio waves, because they easily penetrate gases and dusts. Of course, we also use optical devices, such as laser light. SETI does not broadcast, it only searches.
In 1963, the Big Ear radio telescope was built on the grounds of the private Ohio Wesleyan University, which operated until 1998. The longest SETI program in our history so far.
The Big Ear catched the WOW! signal in 1977.
The WOW! signal
On the 15th of August 1977, astronomer Dr. Jerry R. Ehman caught a signal that lasted 72 seconds and was unlike any other before. This signal was detectable at the frequency emitted by hydrogen. It hasn’t happened again since then. There have been theories about what this could have been, but none have been proven.
According to one of these theories, the radio telescope caught the signals of a pair of comets, but it was later proven that no comets passed through the examined area at that time and comets do not emit radio signals at this frequency.
Another theory was born this year. Amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero examined the region from which the Wow! signal comes. According to him, if the signal is artificial, it could have come from a Sun-like star from the signal range 2MASS 19281982-2640123.
And where does the name come from? While analyzing the data, Dr. Jerry R. Ehman engraved only one word next to the outstanding, different value: WOW!
But where did modern SETI start?
Nikola Tesla (July 10, 1856 – January 7, 1943) Serbian-American physicist, inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, philosopher, and Guglielmo Marconi (April 25, 1874 – July 20, 1937) Italian physicist and engineer, for example, were thought to they can pick up the signals of the Martians with a radio.
Modern SETI dates back to 1959. In that year, two physicists, Phillip Morrison (November 7, 1915 – April 22, 2005) and Giuseppe Cocconi (1914–2008), set out on a simple theory. They used the world’s most powerful radar transmitter as a basis, and that it is directed to a large receiving antenna. In their minds, the two physicists separated the transmitter and the receiver. They wanted to know where will be the distance would be when they could still reliably receive each other’s signals. To their surprise, it turned out that even if the transmitter and receiver are separated by a light-year distance, the radio connection can still be established.
In other words, even with the radio technology of the 1950s, it was theoretically possible to use radio to signal across distances comparable to interstellar distances. This remarkable calculation led the two scientists to write a paper suggesting that maybe intelligent aliens are using radio to communicate, and that we should be looking for such signals. The first person to actually investigate was Frank Drake (May 28, 1930 – ), astronomer, astrophysicist, father of SETI. In 1960, he used an 85-foot-diameter antenna at Green Bank, West Virginia, to search for signals that might come from two very close star systems. During the two weeks of his experiment, Drake did not hear any alien transmissions, yet his project was the beginning of modern SETI.
NASA and the SETI Institute
From the 1960s, NASA also financed smaller SETI projects and they also worked on their own program, which was later cancelled. John Billingham, the head of life sciences at NASA Ames Research Center at the time, worked out how research could be done more efficiently. This gave rise to the SETI Institute, a non-profit organization, in 1984 with two members: Tom Pierson and Jill Tarter astronomer. Today, roughly 100 scientists are members of the organization.
Sub-centers were created, the research department of which runs under the name of the Carl Sagan Center.
Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetologist, biologist, astrobiologist, and peace activist. His work deserves a separate article. =) He also worked as a consultant for NASA. He worked to do on the Apollo program, some space probes, it was his idea to send a message into outer space with the probes, and I could list many, many, really many mind-blowing things. He was a true pioneer. His passion was the promotion of science and the SETI program.
The movie Contact was also made from his novel. =)
The Center of Education has got a STEM program, what is funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation. Their goal is to make the sciences as widely known as possible, from children to adults to educators, primarily in the field of outer space and astrobiology.
STEM – Science + Technology + Engineering + Mathematics
A separate department was created for “PR”. The mission of the Center for Outrich, beyond the obvious, is to introduce and popularize the natural sciences as widely as possible in various forums (podcast, radio program, magazines, etc.), with various colourful programs and lecture series.
There is also a Hungarian aspect, however, in the person of Iván Almár (April 21, 1932 – ), astronomer, space researcher, doctor of physical sciences, hereditary and honorary president of the Hungarian Astronautical Society(MANT), researcher of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, member of the International Academy of Astronauts (IAA).
Among other things, he was the co-chairman of the IAA SETI Committee. The Rio scale is he and Jill Tarter‘s work. It is like the Richter scale, which is meant to show the strength of earthquakes. This scale, in turn, is a scale for categorizing the effects of a public announcement of evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Whether SETI is science or fiction… sooner or later, time and research will prove one of them. =)
Be a Nerdy Bird!
