SETI  

Breakthrough Initiatives, a $100 million, 10-year multi-disciplinary effort to dramatically accelerate the search for intelligent life in the Universe, was announced recently by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking. Project leaders include Martin Rees, Frank Drake, Geoff Marcy, Pete Worden, Ann Druyan, Dan Werthimer and Andrew Siemion.

Russian Billionaire Yuri Milner was joined at The Royal Society recently by Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, Frank Drake, Geoff Marcy, Pete Worden and Ann Druyan to announce the unprecedented $100 million global Breakthrough Initiatives to reinvigorate the search for life in the universe.

The first of two initiatives announced, Breakthrough Listen, will be the most powerful, comprehensive and intensive scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. The second, Breakthrough Message, will fund an international competition to generate messages representing humanity and planet Earth, which might one day be sent to other civilizations.

Breakthrough Listen

• Biggest scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth.

• Significant access to two of the world's most powerful telescopes – 100 Meter Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, USA ("Green Bank Telescope")1 and 64-metre diameter Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia ("Parkes Telescope").

• 50 times more sensitive than previous programs dedicated to SETI research.

• Will cover 10 times more of the sky than previous programs.

• Will scan at least 5 times more of the radio spectrum – and 100 times faster.

• In tandem with a radio search, Automated Planet Finder Telescope at Lick Observatory in California, USA ("Lick Telescope")2 will undertake world's deepest and broadest search for optical laser transmissions.

• Initiative will span 10 years.

• Financial commitment is $100,000,000.

• Unprecedented scope

The program will include a survey of the 1,000,000 closest stars to Earth. It will scan the center of our galaxy and the entire galactic plane. Beyond the Milky Way, it will listen for messages from the 100 closest galaxies. The telescopes used are exquisitely sensitive to long-distance signals, even of low or moderate power:

• If a civilization based around one of the 1,000 nearest stars transmits to us with the power of common aircraft radar, Breakthrough Listen telescopes could detect it.
• If a civilization transmits from the center of the Milky Way, with any more than 12 times the output of interplanetary radars we use to probe the Solar System, Breakthrough Listen telescopes could detect it.
• From a nearby star (25 trillion miles away), Breakthrough Listen's optical search could detect a 100-watt laser (energy output of normal household light bulb).

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Open Data, Open Source, Open Platform

The program will generate vast amounts of data. All data will be open to the public. This will likely constitute the largest amount of scientific data ever made available to the public. The Breakthrough Listen team will use and develop the most powerful software for sifting and searching this flood of data.

All software will be open source. Both the software and the hardware used in the Breakthrough Listen project will be compatible with other telescopes around the world, so that they could join the search for intelligent life. As well as using the Breakthrough Listen software, scientists and members of the public will be able to add to it, developing their own applications to analyze the data.

Crowdsourced processing power

Breakthrough Listen will also be joining and supporting SETI@home, University of California, Berkeley's ground breaking distributed computing platform, with 9 million volunteers around the world donating their spare computing power to search astronomical data for signs of life. Collectively, they constitute one of the largest supercomputers in the world.

Breakthrough Message

• International competition to create digital messages that represent humanity and planet Earth.

• The pool of prizes will total $1,000,000.

• Details on the competition will be announced at a later date.

• This initiative is not a commitment to send messages. It's a way to learn about the potential languages of interstellar communication and to spur global discussion on the ethical and philosophical issues surrounding communication with intelligent life beyond Earth.

Project Leadership

• Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, Fellow of Trinity College; Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics, University of Cambridge.

• Pete Worden, Chairman, Breakthrough Prize Foundation.

• Frank Drake, Chairman Emeritus, SETI Institute; Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz; Founding Director, National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center; Former Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy, Cornell University.

• Geoff Marcy, Professor of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley; Alberts SETI Chair.

• Ann Druyan, Creative Director of the Interstellar Message, NASA Voyager; Co-Founder and CEO, Cosmos Studios; Emmy and Peabody award winning Writer and Producer.

• Dan Werthimer, Co-founder and chief scientist of the SETI@home project; director of SERENDIP; principal investigator for CASPER.

• Andrew Siemion, Director, Berkeley SETI Research Center.

Milner said: "With Breakthrough Listen, we're committed to bringing the Silicon Valley approach to the search for intelligent life in the Universe. Our approach to data will be open and taking advantage of the problem-solving power of social networks."

Hawking said: "I strongly support the Breakthrough Initiatives and the search for extraterrestrial life."

Drake said: "Right now there could be messages from the stars flying right through the room, through us all. That still sends a shiver down my spine. The search for intelligent life is a great adventure. And Breakthrough Listen is giving it a huge lift."

"With Breakthrough Listen, we're committed to bringing the Silicon Valley approach to the search for intelligent life in the Universe."

"We've learned a lot in the last fifty years about how to look for signals from space. With the Breakthrough Initiatives, the learning curve is likely to bend upward significantly," he added.

Druyan said:

The Breakthrough Message competition is designed to spark the imaginations of millions, and to generate conversation about who we really are in the universe and what it is that we wish to share about the nature of being alive on Earth. Even if we don't send a single message, the act of conceptualizing one can be transformative. In creating the Voyager Interstellar Message, we strived to attain a cosmic perspective on our planet, our species and our time. It was intended for two distinct kinds of recipients - the putative extraterrestrials of distant worlds in the remote future and our human contemporaries. As we approach the Message's fortieth anniversary, I am deeply grateful for the chance to collaborate on the Breakthrough Message, for what we might discover together and in the hope that it might inform our outlook and even our conduct on this world.

SOURCE  Breakthrough Iniitiatives

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 SETI  

A newly published study suggests that mankind is still not ready for contact with a supposed extraterrestrial civilization.

The project scientists at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program (SETI) are known for tracking possible extraterrestrial signals, but now they are also considering sending messages from Earth telling of our position. Now, a researcher from the University of Cádiz in Spain questions this idea in view of the results from a survey taken by students, revealing the general level of ignorance about the cosmos and the influence of religion when tackling these matters.

The study suggests that mankind is still not ready for contact with a supposed extraterrestrial civilization.

The SETI project is an initiative that began in the 1970s with funding from NASA, but that has evolved towards the collaboration of millions of Internet users for the processing of data from the Arecibo Observatory (Puerto Rico), where space tracking is carried out.

"Regarding our relation with a possible intelligent extraterrestrial life, we should not rely on moral reference points of thought, since they are heavily influenced by religion. Why should some more intelligent beings be ‘good’?"

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Now the members of this controversial project are trying to go further and not only search for extraterrestrial signs, but also actively send messages from Earth (Active SETI) to detect possible extraterrestrial civilizations. Astrophysicists, such as Stephen Hawking, have already warned of the risk that this implies for humanity, since it could favour the arrival of beings with more advanced technology and dubious intentions.

The ethical and sociological implications of this proposal have been analysed by the neuro-psychologist Gabriel G. de la Torre, professor at the University of Cádiz and participant in previous projects such as Mars 500 or space psychology topical team project financed by the European Space Agency, who wonders: “Can such a decision be taken on behalf of the whole planet? What would happen if it was successful and ‘someone’ received our signal? Are we prepared for this type of contact?”

To answer these questions, the professor sent a questionnaire to 116 American, Italian and Spanish university students. The survey assessed their knowledge of astronomy, their level of perception of the physical environment, their opinion on the place that things occupy in the cosmos, as well as religious questions – for example, “do you believe that God created the universe?” – or on the likelihood of contact with extraterrestrials.

The results, published in the journal Acta Astronautica, indicate that, as a species, humanity is still not ready for trying to actively contact a supposed extraterrestrial civilisation, since people lack knowledge and preparation. For this reason, SETI researchers are recommended in this study to look for alternative strategies.

“This pilot study demonstrates that the knowledge of the general public of a certain education level about the cosmos and our place within it is still poor. Therefore, a cosmic awareness must be further promoted – where our mind is increasingly conscious of the global reality that surrounds us – using the best tool available to us: education,” De la Torre emphasised. ”In this respect, we need a new Galileo to lead this journey”.

It was deduced from the questionnaires, which will soon be available to everyone on line, that university students and the rest of society lack awareness on many astronomical aspects, despite the enormous progress of science and technology. It also revealed that the majority of people consider these subjects according to their religious belief and that they would rely on politicians in the event of a huge global-scale crisis having to be resolved.

“Regarding our relation with a possible intelligent extraterrestrial life, we should not rely on moral reference points of thought, since they are heavily influenced by religion. Why should some more intelligent beings be ‘good’?,” added the researcher, who believes that this matter should not be monopolized by a handful of scientists: “In fact, it is a global matter with a strong ethical component in which we must all participate.”

What do you think?  Are you ready to talk to E.T.?


SOURCE  SiNC

By 33rd Square

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 Science  

April Labarron writes about six female researchers who are working on incredible discoveries this century.

Science has become so much more than a bunch of people in a lab staring at a selection of stereo microscopes. It's a fun, dynamic, and interesting field with highly creative people doing incredible work. Many of those people are women who, despite hostility in traditionally male fields, have managed and continue to do amazing things for us. Here are six absolutely incredible women who are rocking the science world in the 21st century.

Deborah Jin

Jin is working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology on some really cool experiments. Literally one-third of a millionth of a degree above absolute zero cool. Jin managed to create a material that exists almost at the point where matter stops moving entirely not just once, but then again with a different substance to start with. This can open up incredible new avenues for learning how matter works.

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Margaret A. Liu

The Vice Chair of Transgene in Strasbourg, France, Liu is working on a way to combat HIV by using DNA injections. Using dormant viruses in order to make vaccines runs the risk of the virus becoming active again, but Liu's work is trying to side step that problem all together.

Marcia McNutt

President and Chief Executive Officer of Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, she is the first woman to run a freestanding oceanography research institute in the US. She has a particular talent for working with researchers and engineers, encouraging new data and new material advancements.

Cherry Murray

Murray is not only the Vice President of Bell Labs' Lucent Technologies where she oversees their research strategy, she also does her own research on colloidal systems, which are suspensions where particles don't settle or dissolve in liquid, as well as work on phase transitions.

Jill Tarter

Tarter, pictured above,  is the Director of Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. An astronomer, she is in charge of setting up the arrays of radio telescopes and working with the data for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.

Jacqueline K. Barton 

Barton is a Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. Recently, she discovered that DNA conducts electricity in its normal state, but doesn't do so as well when it is damaged by certain chemicals or mutations. This gives scientists the ability to check for harmful mutations with chips made of DNA attached to gold on silicon wafers.

By April Labarron

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April Labarron is a native of Southern California. She has her BA in English/Literature from MSJC in Menifee, Ca. She views her freelance writing, not only as a career, but as her passion. Other areas of interest include; movies, food, singing, soccer, traveling, shopping and a continuous desire for learning. She lives on her own and is accompanied by her Pomeranian named, Elvis. She currently resides in Temecula, California. 

 Search for Extraterrestrial Life  

In a lecture earlier this year, Dr. Jeff Kuhn describes a new idea for completing a nearby extraterrestrial cosmic census and describe some of the large telescope technology that exists today to undertake it. Kuhn proposes looking for heat signatures will help us find extraterrestrial civilizations, or ETCs.

Where are the extrasterrestrial civilizations and do we have the technology to find them?

We now know that we're surrounded by habitable extrasolar planets. Even half a century ago, before we knew of any extrasolar planets, Enrico Fermi speculated that the absence of any "proof" for extraterrestrial civilization could be important new for life on Earth. This is now known as the "Fermi Paradox."

Today his query is even more compelling. In the video below, Dr. Jeff Kuhn describes a new idea for completing a nearby extraterrestrial cosmic census and describe some of the technology that exists today to undertake it.

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The detection of an extraterrestrial civilization (ETC), even without further communication, is important in many gnostic and practical aspects. For instance, one of the current burning issues for our civilization is surviving global climate changes because of increasing power generation.

Kuhn proposes that detecting more advanced civilizations will demonstrate a fundamental possibility that civilization can achieve a phase of sustainable global-scale power consumption.

For a half-century we have sought radio frequency evidence and, more recently, optical communications of ETCs. However, these approaches depend on finding alien transmissions, beam "leakage", or what could be called intentional electromagnetic signals from ETCs that are operating cosmic beacons.

The proposed Colossus telescope will employ a strategy for detecting an unintentional signal caused by alien planetary warming. Thanks to its large aperture and unique coronographic properties, it will be capable of detecting the thermodynamic signal from Earth-like ETC's within an interestingly large cosmic volume.

The outcome of such a dual wavelength, visible-IR, search will be largely independent of alien communication modes and will have quantifiable statistical completeness. Even a null result will help us understand the Fermi paradox, "why do we appear to be alone?"

Detecting an ETC signal is possible with current technology but requires a telescope and sensitive detector that can measure the planet's thermal flux and its reflected optical light, while distinguishing these from the star's scattered light and the terrestrial thermal noise background. Glare from the central star comes from the terrestrial atmosphere's distorting effect on the optical wavefront and from diffraction due to telescope optics. Suppressing this noise requires highly accurate adaptive optics (AO) and a coronagraph system. These requirements are implemented in the Colossus design.

With the Colossus telescope, which Kuhn says can be built in five years with sufficient funding, we will be able to see advanced civilization heat pattern as can be seen in night lights on the Earth from space.



SOURCE  IfA Maui, The Colossus Corporation

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