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  • richardmitnick 11:32 am on January 27, 2023 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "What happens when we detect alien life?", , , , , , , , , NIROSETI-Near-Infrared Optical SETI instrument at UCSC LIck Observatory, Scientists have been listening for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations for decades but what would they do if they actually heard one?, SETI Institute   

    From “Astronomy Magazine” : “What happens when we detect alien life?” 

    From “Astronomy Magazine”

    1.19.23
    FROM THE May 2012 ISSUE

    Seth Shostak | SETI Institute

    Scientists have been listening for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations for decades but what would they do if they actually heard one?



    1
    The Sun-like star Epsilon (ε) Eridani was one of Frank Drake’s first targets in his search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Astronomers have since learned that the star anchors the closest known planetary system, depicted in this artist’s conception, but no detectable life. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


    We’ve never heard a peep from aliens. But improved technology is speeding up the search for extra- terrestrial intelligence (SETI), so what happens if today’s silence suddenly gives way to tomorrow’s discovery?


    SETI Institute







    Would the world rejoice in the news that someone’s out there? Would euphoria engulf humanity, as Nobel Prizes are doled out like after-dinner mints?

    That’s one view. But many people think the dis- covery would be hushed up as quickly as a Mafia informant, assuming that the public couldn’t handle the news. Or scarier still, kept secret for fear that an unauthorized response would tell a hostile race exactly where to send their interstellar battlewagons.

    That’s melodramatic enough. But has any serious consideration gone into what happens when our efforts to detect cosmic intelligence pay off and we find a blip of a signal in the sea of radio noise that pours into the SETI antennas?

    Some think that addressing that question — even in a speculative way — is hubristic at best and wildly pre- sumptuous at worst. After all, SETI scientists have been torquing their telescopes toward celestial targets for more than half a century without ever detecting such a signal. If we haven’t won the E.T. lottery in all that time, why worry about what would happen if we got the winning ticket?

    Simple: SETI researchers are buying more tickets all the time, and the chances of scoring the big one keep going up. As computer power improves and new detection technology comes out of the labs, the search is accelerating. Unless the aliens are excessively secretive or simply nonexistent, we could find evidence for their presence within decades.

    So, again, then what?

    2
    The Allen Telescope Array and the Jansky Very Large Array (pictured) are powerful enough to detect and pinpoint a possible extraterrestrial transmission with a high degree of accuracy. The latter hosts 27 antennas, while the former boasts 42 and plans to have 350 upon completion.Credit: Dave Finley/AUI/NRAO/NSF.

    Immediate reactions

    In the spring of 1960, astronomer Frank Drake performed the first modern SETI experiment, whimsically dubbed Project Ozma after L. Frank Baum’s fictional queen of Oz. What few people realize is that he actually detected something. While pointing his antenna at the nearby Sun-like star Epsilon (ε) Eridani, Drake heard a strong hammering signal. Surprised by how quickly his search succeeded, he wondered, “What do we do now?”

    Drake answered his own question by rigging up additional equipment, and he soon proved that the throbbing bleats from his loudspeaker were terrestrial interference, not Eridanians trying to phone our home.

    Project Ozma could tune to only one frequency at a time, but today’s SETI receivers simultaneously monitor hundreds of millions of channels. Consequently, picking up a signal is neither remarkable nor rare: A few dozen typically come up with each scan. Naturally, no one gets very excited about this. Instead, researchers rely on sophisticated software to perform the tedious task of deciding whether these signals are likely to be alien intelligence or (as in Drake’s case) just more human-caused radio static.

    Only rarely does any signal survive this automatic scrutiny. But if and when that happens, a series of additional tests occurs. Eventually, the astronomers running the experiment ask someone at another observatory to verify the detection — to rule out equipment bugs, coding errors, or pranks.

    The scenario for handling a signal is briefly described in a document developed under the auspices of the International Academy of Astronautics, and referred to as “SETI detection protocols.” These “best practices” boil down to this: (1) carefully verify that the signal is truly extraterrestrial, (2) inform other scientists and the public, and (3) seek international approval before transmitting any reply.
    ____________________________________________________________________________

    Abridged SETI detection protocols

    Confirmed detections:

    If the verification process confirms that a signal is due to extraterrestrial intelligence, the discoverer shall report this conclusion in a full and complete open manner to the public, the scientific community, and the Secretary General of the United Nations. All data necessary for the confirmation of the detection should be made available to the international scientific community through publications, meetings, conferences, and other appropriate means.

    The discovery should be monitored. Any data bear- ing on the evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence should be recorded and stored permanently to the greatest extent feasible and practicable.

    If the evidence of detection is in the form of electromagnetic signals, observers should seek international agreement to protect the appropriate frequencies by exercising the extraordinary procedures established within the World Administrative Radio Council of the International Telecommunication Union.

    Post detections:

    A Post Detection Task Group under the auspices of the SETI Permanent Committee has been established to assist in matters that may arise in the event of a confirmed signal, and to support the scientific and public analysis by offering guidance, interpretation, and discussion of the wider implications of the detection.

    Response to signals:

    In the case of the confirmed detection of a signal, signatories to this declaration will not respond without first seeking guidance and consent of a broadly representative international body, such as the United Nations.

    (From the International Academy of Astronautics Commission 1 “Space Physical Sciences” Meeting on October 2, 2011)
    ____________________________________________________________________________

    Not so fast

    These are all patently good ideas that seem to suggest that everyone would handle a discovery soberly. However, such interesting signals are bound to provoke a response that’s both messy and confused because verification will take many days, at the least.

    During all that time, word of the possible detection will surely spread via blogs and tweets from the researchers themselves (there’s no policy of secrecy in SETI). So you can bet that long before any official press conference announcing that we’ve found the aliens, you’ll have heard about it many times over. Indeed, you should brace yourself for plenty of future false alarms caused by signals that — at first blush — look promising. This has occurred in the past and shows the error of those who think that a discovery could be covered up.

    Any real detection would be a headliner, everyone agrees. SETI practitioner Paul Horowitz of Harvard University in Cam- bridge, Massachusetts, says it would “easily be the most interesting discovery in human history. Journalists would go wild, at least for a month or two.”

    Astronomer Jill Tarter, who heads the SETI Institute’s listening efforts in Mountain View, California, concurs: “The general public will be in an excited state for a while, fueled by the media. But UFO enthusiasts will yawn because they knew it all along.”

    A public reaction of initial enthusiasm, and not mayhem, has precedent. Consider the 1996 announcement that NASA scientists had found fossilized martian microbes in a meteorite. That story ran in The New York Times with billboard-sized headlines for three days. The public’s reaction to the possible detection of life beyond Earth? “That’s interesting. Tell us more.”

    The meteorite story was a stunted reprisal of astronomer Percival Lowell’s reports of martian canals a century earlier. Again, people were tantalized, but few seemed to panic.

    3
    When astronomers announced that a martian rock contained fossilized microbes (the tube-like structures, less than one-hundredth the width of a human hair) in 1996, the public proved itself capable of “handling” an extraterrestrial discovery. Credit: NASA.

    Early results

    Of course, in 1996 no one felt threatened by dead protozoans, even if they were from Mars. But SETI searches for intelligent life, and given that human beings are still the new kids on the technological block (consider that we’ve only had radio technology for a hundred years), you can be pretty sure that anyone we hear will be more advanced than us — possibly much more advanced.

    That might sound unsettling, but most people don’t see it that way. A 2005 survey by the National Geographic Channel, the SETI Institute, and the University of Connecticut found that 72 percent of Americans said they would feel “excited and hopeful” to learn about a signal from E.T. Only 20 percent confessed they would be “anxious and nervous.”

    Again, perhaps that’s not too surprising, given that any transmission we discover likely will be from beings many hundreds of light-years distant, a seemingly safe remove. And, at first, we won’t know much more than the signal’s existence.

    But you can bet your paycheck that every telescope on Earth will aim straight for the transmission. Is a star waiting there? Does it have planets? In the rush to learn more, even a stalled project like NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finder might see new life as scientists shake it out of its comatose state, infuse it with new vigor, and hurl it into orbit.

    3
    NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finder depiction.

    There are some things we could learn quickly about the signal’s source. Within a thousand light-years lie tens of millions of stars. Consequently, a few arcminutes separate them in the sky, on average. A high-resolution radio telescope, such as the Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico [above], has a beam size of about 5 arc seconds at the commonly used SETI frequency of 1420 megahertz. It would have little difficulty pinpointing which star hosts the detected aliens. We’ll know exactly where they live.

    And that’s not all. Two decades ago, radio astronomers Jim Cordes and Woodruff Sullivan considered what we might learn by looking at the subtle variations of any alien signal. This includes small frequency shifts due to the Doppler effect (which alters a signal’s frequency according to its motion), as well as intensity changes due to the atmosphere of E.T.’s planet or simply its daily rotation.

    Careful measurement could theoretically pin down the length of the aliens’ day and year, the size of their world, the presence of moons, and possibly even information about their atmosphere and magnetic field.

    Initial questions

    All of that would be tasty fodder for the technically inclined, but everyone else is going to ask an obvious question: What are the aliens saying? That, of course, assumes that they’re saying anything — that they’ve included a message in the signal. After all, the extraterrestrials might withhold commentary if they want us to reply first, perhaps so they can gauge what level of conversation is appropriate.

    But let’s suppose that E.T. is trying to tell us something. Just getting the message “bits” could be hard. SETI observations add up incoming static for seconds or minutes to increase the sensitivity to weak signals.

    This is completely analogous to astronomical photography — the longer the exposure time, the fainter the stuff you can image. Unfortunately, just as a long exposure would obliterate the rapid flashes of an optical pulsar, so too would these long SETI observations smooth away any message. If, for example, the alien transmission included a television-type signal, researchers would need an antenna roughly 10,000 times larger than most of today’s radio telescopes to see the picture. Building such an enormous antenna would require impressive amounts of money and time. However, after a signal’s detection, it’s reasonable to assume that research money would be practically unlimited, unlike today’s situation.

    In the meantime, the public would be confronted with the fact of cosmic company. We wouldn’t know what they’re like, nor what we might learn from them, only that they exist. Anthropologist Ben Finney of the University of Hawaii at Manoa has predicted that an “interpretation industry” would quickly sprout — facile pundits who, out of conviction or merely greed, will explain to the masses what contact means and how we should feel about it.

    And in particular, how should religions react? Research in this area is lacking, but most mainstream theologians have expressed the upbeat view that our belief systems could adapt. As Vatican Observatory astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno has said, “If your religion has survived millennia — if it can handle Copernicus, Galileo, and even Darwin — then E.T. should eventually prove palatable.”

    Mainstream religion might easily incorporate the discovery, but fundamentalists will have a harder time. They are less willing to accept a cosmic circumstance that’s not found in scripture. And unless you’re inclined to consider seraphim, nephilim, or angels as alien beings, most religions don’t anticipate the presence of intelligent life on other worlds (an exception is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints).

    The fundamentalists would likely rail against the discovery, claiming it’s “just Satan, tempting you,” according to sociologist Bill Bainbridge of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

    Significance sets in

    Without doubt, learning of other beings among the star fields of the Milky Way would be discomfiting to some. But the most profound consequences of a SETI detection would surely be the long-term impacts. And these would affect everyone.

    The degree to which a signal would alter the lives of our descendants depends on whether we could decode any attached message. This might sound like a tractable problem — merely a matter of time and effort. After all, humans eventually deciphered hieroglyphics, Linear B, and other “messages” that once seemed as inscrutable as teenage behavior. But the universe is old, and consequently the content of any message might simply be incomprehensible to our 3-pound hominid brains.

    Still, let’s take the sunny view and assume that we eventually learn what the aliens are saying. Because, as noted, they’re likely to be well in advance of us, the information might include such practical topics as all of Physics and Astronomy, the extent and nature of Cosmic Biology and intelligence, the whether and how of faster-than- light travel, and many other things that are the provenance of science fiction today. To suddenly learn such matters would trigger a sharp discontinuity in our species’ history — a kind of “wormhole” to a future that we might otherwise reach only after thousands or millions of years.

    Aside from such a torrent of knowledge, we would confront the fact that the differences among humans are of trivial import compared to the gulf between extra-terrestrials and ourselves. Some people, such as SETI’s Tarter, suggest that this would lead to more human harmony and less worry that we’re on the road to destruction. After all, if they’ve survived their technical adolescence, then we could, too.

    Sociologist Don Tarter of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, is less sanguine. He notes that the idea of the world’s peoples coming together in sweetness and light — popular in the early days of space exploration with the first pictures of Earth as a small blue orb against a vast, dark sky — was shattered by subsequent wars and terrorist attacks. We’re back to the usual conflict and competition.

    And what about a response? If we know where the aliens live, do we dare reply with our own shout out? Or would that, as some aver [Stephan Hawking, among others], merely expose our planet to possible future destruction because we’ve given away our existence and position?

    In fact, while no one can say whether aliens would be peaceable or pugnacious, we’ve been sending radio, television, and (most visibly) radar signals into space inadvertently for more than 90 years. Any society that has the capability to travel interstellar distances and threaten our world could easily pick up these “leaked” signals. Indeed, by using their own sun as gravitational lens, the nearest could theoretically see the lights from our cities. Any deliberate reply from us would simply add to information they already have.

    The great unknown

    Frankly, predicting the truly durable consequences of a SETI success is a fool’s errand. Consider if members of the Spanish court in 1492 had written a treatise on what the discovery of a new continent might eventually mean. An interesting exercise, but not one likely to have much currency a few hundred years down the road.

    But this much we can say: If SETI succeeds, we’ll have proof that biology is as much a part of the cosmos as pulsars and pockmarked planets. And, while instant brotherhood is unlikely to erupt suddenly on Earth, we’ll at least know we’re neither the crown of creation nor even particularly exceptional. For as long as our species exists, we’ll be aware that we’re just one more duck in a row.

    And you can be sure that news will ruffle a few feathers.

    See the full article here .

    Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.


    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    Astronomy is a magazine about the science and hobby of Astronomy. Based near Milwaukee in Waukesha, Wisconsin, it is produced by Kalmbach Publishing. Astronomy’s readers include those interested in astronomy and those who want to know about sky events, observing techniques, astrophotography, and amateur astronomy in general.

    Astronomy was founded in 1973 by Stephen A. Walther, a graduate of The University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point and amateur astronomer. The first issue, August 1973, consisted of 48 pages with five feature articles and information about what to see in the sky that month. Issues contained astrophotos and illustrations created by astronomical artists. Walther had worked part time as a planetarium lecturer at The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and developed an interest in photographing constellations at an early age. Although even in childhood he was interested to obsession in Astronomy, he did so poorly in mathematics that his mother despaired that he would ever be able to earn a living. However, he graduated in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, and as a senior class project he created a business plan for a magazine for amateur astronomers. With the help of his brother David, he was able to bring the magazine to fruition. He died in 1977.

     

  • richardmitnick 8:05 pm on March 30, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , SETI Institute, SETI Institute's Hat Creek Radio Observatory   

    From SETI Institute: “Research group to construct outrigger telescope to search for FRBs at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory” 


    From SETI Institute

    March 30, 2022

    The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) is expanding its ability to more accurately identify where fast radio bursts (FRBs) are coming from. The organization is constructing a new radio telescope outrigger at the SETI Institute’s Hat Creek Radio Observatory (HCRO) [below], site of the Allen Telescope Array (ATA). The outrigger will work with the main CHIME instrument in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley and enable CHIME-detected FRBs to be precisely localized on the sky. In addition to the new radio telescope at HCRO, CHIME is constructing outriggers near Princeton, British Columbia on land kindly leased to CHIME by HML Mining Ltd., and at the Green Bank Observatory.

    See the full article here .

    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    SETI Institute
    About the SETI Institute
    What is life? How does it begin? Are we alone? These are some of the questions we ask in our quest to learn about and share the wonders of the universe. At the SETI Institute we have a passion for discovery and for passing knowledge along as scientific ambassadors.

    The SETI Institute is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit scientific research institute headquartered in Mountain View, California. We are a key research contractor to NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and we collaborate with industry partners throughout Silicon Valley and beyond.

    Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute employs more than 130 scientists, educators, and administrative staff. Work at the SETI Institute is anchored by three centers: the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe (research), the Center for Education and the Center for Outreach.

    The SETI Institute welcomes philanthropic support from individuals, private foundations, corporations and other groups to support our education and outreach initiatives, as well as unfunded scientific research and fieldwork.

    A Special Thank You to SETI Institute Partners and Collaborators
    • Campoalto, Chile, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Headquarters, National Science Foundation, Aerojet Rocketdyne,SRI International

    Frontier Development Lab Partners
    • Breakthrough Prize Foundation, European Space Agency, Google Cloud, IBM, Intel, KBRwyle. Kx Lockheed Martin, NASA Ames Research Center, Nvidia, SpaceResources Luxembourg, XPrize

    In-kind Service Providers
    • Gunderson Dettmer – General legal services, Hello Pilgrim – Website Design and Development Steptoe & Johnson – IP legal services, Danielle Futselaar

    SETI/Allen Telescope Array situated at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, 290 miles (470 km) northeast of San Francisco, California, USA, Altitude 986 m (3,235 ft), the origins of the Institute’s search.

    Alumna Shelley Wright, now an assistant professor of physics at UC San Diego (US), discusses the dichroic filter of the NIROSETI instrument, developed at the U Toronto Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (CA) and brought to UCSD and installed at the UC Santa Cruz (US) Lick Observatory Nickel Telescope (Photo by Laurie Hatch).

    Shelley Wright of UC San Diego with (US) NIROSETI, developed at U Toronto Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (CA) at the 1-meter Nickel Telescope at Lick Observatory at UC Santa Cruz

    NIROSETI team from left to right Rem Stone UCO Lick Observatory Dan Werthimer, UC Berkeley; Jérôme Maire, U Toronto; Shelley Wright, UCSD; Patrick Dorval, U Toronto; Richard Treffers, Starman Systems. (Image by Laurie Hatch).

    Laser SETI

    LaserSETI observatory installation at Haleakala Observatory in Maui, Hawai’i aimed East. There is also an installation at Robert Ferguson Observatory, Sonoma, CA aimed West for full coverage [no image available].

    SETI Institute – 189 Bernardo Ave., Suite 100
    Mountain View, CA 94043
    Phone 650.961.6633 – Fax 650-961-7099
    Privacy Policy – Questions and Comments

    Also in the hunt, but not a part of the SETI Institute
    SETI@home, a BOINC [Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing] project originated in the Space Science Lab at UC Berkeley.

    BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience. BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, developed at UC Berkeley.

     

  • richardmitnick 4:21 pm on December 21, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "LaserSETI installs 2nd observatory at Haleakala Observatory", , LaserSETI is a unique astronomy program designed to detect potential laser pulses originating from outside the solar system., SETI Institute, The Haleakala Observatory -University of Hawai'i Institute for Astronomy Facilities (US)   

    From SETI Institute via phys.org : “LaserSETI installs 2nd observatory at Haleakala Observatory” 


    From SETI Institute

    via

    phys.org

    December 21, 2021

    1
    LaserSETI Installation at Haleakala. The instruments here look at the same point as the ones at Ferguson (RFO) in Sonoma, CA. Image Credit: Eliot Gillum.

    Last summer the SETI Institute began installing a second LaserSETI Observatory, this time 10,000 feet above sea level at The Haleakala Observatory -University of Hawai’i Institute for Astronomy Facilities (US), thanks to the University of Hawai’i’s Institute of Astronomy (IfA).

    3
    Haleakalā Observatory located on the island of Maui owned by the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawai’i (US)

    As a result of challenges involving equipment damaged during shipping, supply chain delays for replacement parts, equipment malfunctions and even a blizzard in Hawai’i, the installation was delayed but is now complete. While two of the four cameras are not fully functional and will be replaced, observations are now possible and data collection is underway. The staff at the IfA has provided invaluable assistance throughout the setup process especially during times when it was not possible for LaserSETI staff to be onsite due to COVID restrictions and other logistical challenges.

    LaserSETI is a unique astronomy program designed to detect potential laser pulses originating from outside the solar system. It is building a global network of instruments to monitor the entire night sky. Each LaserSETI device consists of two identical cameras rotated 90 degrees to one another along the viewing axis. They work by using a transmission grating to split light sources up into spectra, then read the camera out more than a thousand times per second. The first LaserSETI observatory is at the Robert Ferguson Observatory in Sonoma, CA.

    2
    Robert Ferguson Observatory, Sonoma, CA (US)

    Cameras at the new site in Hawai’i will be aimed east, and the California devices are be aimed west. The two observatories will provide redundant coverage of the sky over the Pacific because, as Carl Sagan said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

    “LaserSETI is attempting a big step forward in SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It’s the first project in either optical or radio astronomy designed to cover the entire sky. When you don’t know where to look, an instrument with an enormous field-of-view and time range allows us to cover a lot more ground than ever before.” said Eliot Gillum, principal investigator for LaserSETI. “There are so many people who’ve helped make LaserSETI possible that I’d like to thank. From the project team to other scientists at the SETI Institute, to our Indiegogo backers and private donors, to our outstanding observatory partners at Institute for Astronomy and Ferguson Observatory, it takes a village to tackle a project this audacious.”

    “The possibility that life exists elsewhere is exciting for the public, especially with the reports of biologically interesting molecules in the atmosphere of Venus, the selection of two Venus missions by NASA, the Mars Perseverance rover mission, and the upcoming Europa Clipper mission to explore Jupiter’s moon,” said Karen Meech, IfA interim director. “UH has had a long involvement in Astrobiology to explore the possibility of life elsewhere—both through research related to formation of habitable worlds, discovery of exoplanets, and the development of new innovative mirror and telescope technology to detect planets. It is exciting to add a new direction to this investigation by searching for technological signatures.”

    Traditionally optical SETI projects have relied on photomultiplier tubes to detect laser flashes, essentially making them one-pixel cameral and enabling only a small part of the sky to be observed. LaserSETI uses two cameras with a commercial lenses that images approximately 75 degrees of the sky onto off-the-shelf solid-state detectors. In front of the lens is a grating that transforms any light source in the camera’s field-of-view into a double rainbow-like spectrum. While stars will produce a complete spectrum from blue to red, a laser will only show up at its characteristic wavelength (think of your red laser pointer). Able to distinguish different colors of light, LaserSETI instrumentation is not limited to extremely short flashes as conventional SETI searches have been. And because the devices are wide-angle, it’s possible to cover the entire night sky with a relatively small number of them, thereby keeping costs down.

    Initial funding for LaserSETI was raised through a crowdfunding campaign in 2017, with additional financing provided through private donations. The plan calls for ten more instruments deployed in Puerto Rico, the Canary Islands, and Chile. When this phase is complete, the system will be able to monitor the nighttime sky in roughly half of the western hemisphere.

    Next steps for LaserSETI at Haleakala will include replacing two of the cameras to bring the system to full functionality. This is expected to take place by January of 2022.

    See the full article here .

    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    SETI Institute
    About the SETI Institute
    What is life? How does it begin? Are we alone? These are some of the questions we ask in our quest to learn about and share the wonders of the universe. At the SETI Institute we have a passion for discovery and for passing knowledge along as scientific ambassadors.

    The SETI Institute is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit scientific research institute headquartered in Mountain View, California. We are a key research contractor to NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and we collaborate with industry partners throughout Silicon Valley and beyond.

    Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute employs more than 130 scientists, educators, and administrative staff. Work at the SETI Institute is anchored by three centers: the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe (research), the Center for Education and the Center for Outreach.

    The SETI Institute welcomes philanthropic support from individuals, private foundations, corporations and other groups to support our education and outreach initiatives, as well as unfunded scientific research and fieldwork.

    A Special Thank You to SETI Institute Partners and Collaborators
    • Campoalto, Chile, NASA Ames Research Center, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (US) , The National Science Foundation (US), Aerojet Rocketdyne,SRI International

    Frontier Development Lab Partners
    • Breakthrough Prize Foundation, The European Space Agency [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganisation](EU), Google Cloud, IBM, Intel, KBRwyle. Kx Lockheed Martin, NASA Ames Research Center, Nvidia, SpaceResources Luxembourg, XPrize

    In-kind Service Providers
    • Gunderson Dettmer – General legal services, Hello Pilgrim – Website Design and Development Steptoe & Johnson – IP legal services, Danielle Futselaar

    SETI/Allen Telescope Array situated at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, 290 miles (470 km) northeast of San Francisco, California, USA, Altitude 986 m (3,235 ft), the origins of the Institute’s search.

    SETI Institute – 189 Bernardo Ave., Suite 100
    Mountain View, CA 94043
    Phone 650.961.6633 – Fax 650-961-7099
    Privacy Policy – Questions and Comments

    Also in the hunt, but not a part of the SETI Institute
    SETI@home, a BOINC [Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing] project originated in the Space Science Lab at UC Berkeley.

    BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience. BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, developed at UC Berkeley.

     

  • richardmitnick 9:40 pm on December 16, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "What we learned about life beyond Earth in 2021", A new class of exoplanets: Hycean (hydrogen-ocean) worlds., Allen Telescope Array detects FRB-the repeating source known as FRB20201124A., , , , , Complex molecules associated with life spotted in space., , Dual Missions to Venus will shine a light on Earth’s twin- DAVINCI+ and VERITAS., Ganymede has water vapor-could it have life?, Green Bank Observatory(US), LaserSETI observatory installation at Haleakala Observatory in Maui Hawai’i (US), SETI Institute, The U.S. government concluded that most UAPs-Unidentified Ariel Phenomenon-can’t be understood fully due to limited data but says nothing about a possible extraterrestrial source for these incidents   

    From SETI Institute : “What we learned about life beyond Earth in 2021” 


    From SETI Institute

    Dec 8, 2021

    Alien hunters recap the most exciting developments of the year.

    When news broke that scientists had detected a signal when their antennas were aimed at Proxima Centauri, many thought we had finally found evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth.

    Centauris Alpha Beta Proxima, 27 February 2012. Skatebiker.

    Turns out, the signal is easily explainable as terrestrial interference and didn’t come from E.T. Still, 2021 has been full of exciting developments in the search for life beyond Earth. From better understanding the origin of life to exploring potentially habitable worlds of our solar system, here are the SETI highlights of the year.

    Complex molecules associated with life spotted in space.

    For the first time, scientists found complex carbon-bearing molecules critical to the development of life in space. Scientists have long believed that these molecules are abundant in the universe, and in March, the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia detected the first definitive radio signatures from them.
    _____________________________________________________________________________________

    Green Bank Radio Telescope, West Virginia, USA, now the center piece of the Green Bank Observatory(US), being cut loose by the National Science Foundation(US), supported by Breakthrough Listen Project, West Virginia University, and operated by the nonprofit The Associated Universities, Inc.(US)
    _____________________________________________________________________________________

    Alessandra Ricca, SETI Institute researcher, is working on a database of infrared signals from these complex molecules for future observations using the James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched in December.

    National Aeronautics Space Agency(USA)/European Space Agency [Agence spatiale européenne][Europäische Weltraumorganisation](EU)/ Canadian Space Agency [Agence Spatiale Canadienne](CA) Webb Infrared Space Telescope(US) James Webb Space Telescope annotated. Scheduled for launch in October 2021 delayed to December 2021.

    Further research will help humans understand how life originates and the conditions it needs to thrive throughout the universe.

    Perseverance Rover gets to work – what clues about life do its samples hold?

    Perseverence Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover – NASA Mars annotated.

    NASA’s Perseverance Rover, Percy to friends, made a nail-biting landing in Mars’ Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. The Red Planet is of enormous interest to astrobiologists and to SETI because the planet may have once been warmer and wetter and thus habitable. Understanding whether life ever existed on Mars will help humans understand more about how life originated on Earth and, possibly, on other planets.

    Percy successfully cached its first sample of Martian rock, which will be returned to Earth in an upcoming mission. It also made images suggesting Jezero Crater had experienced past flooding, further advancing the idea that it was once a lake.

    And, of course, we can’t forget the little helicopter that could, Ingenuity, which hitched a ride to Mars with Percy.

    NASA Mars Ingenuity helicopter traveling with Perseverance rover.

    Ingenuity became the first aircraft to complete a controlled flight on a planet beyond Earth. The helicopter’s success will help future missions understand how best to use an aircraft as a scout for interesting exploration sites.

    Allen Telescope Array detects FRB.

    In June, the team at the Allen Telescope array announced an observation of a bright double-peaked Fast Radio Burst (FRB) from the repeating source known as FRB20201124A. This observation was the first FRB detected with the ATA, which has been undergoing extensive upgrades for both its receivers and digital signal processing hardware.

    This detection demonstrates the sensitivity of the ATA’s instrumentation and its abilities to detect a radio signal of interest in the search for advanced societies beyond Earth.

    Additionally, Dr. Sofia Sheikh, an astronomer and physicist, has been awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the ATA to focus on FRBs and develop improved SETI detection methods. She will also mentor underrepresented students in physics and astronomy. Read more about these exciting updates here and here.

    U.S. Government issues inconclusive report on UAPs.

    In June, the U.S. government issued its highly anticipated preliminary report on Unidentified Ariel Phenomenon (UAPs). The report concluded that most UAPs can’t be understood fully due to limited data but says nothing about a possible extraterrestrial source for these incidents.

    This report, and the buzz surrounding it, raise important questions for the SETI community, primarily are UAPs worthy of deeper scientific study and if so, how do we do it? Researchers at Harvard University (US), the SETI Institute, and the broader community are working on answers to these questions.

    Dual Missions to Venus will shine a light on Earth’s twin- DAVINCI+ and VERITAS.

    In June, NASA announced two missions to Venus: DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) and VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy).

    DAVINCI+ Artist’s concept of descent stages-Credit Goddard Space Flight Center.

    VERITAS-Exploring the Deep Truths of Venus. Credit NASA JPL.

    These will be the first NASA missions to Venus, often referred to as Earth’s twin, since 1990, and will increase our understanding of the planet and its evolution. This information will help SETI scientists better characterize habitable zones around stars and climate change on planets.

    DAVINCI+ will send a probe into Venus’ atmosphere to better determine its composition at various altitudes and take images of Venus’ “tesserae,” land masses akin to Earth’s continents. David Grinspoon, a member of the SETI Institute’s Science Advisory Board, is a key investigator on this mission.

    VERITAS is an orbiter that will better map the planet’s surface, identify rock types on the surface, and determine if active volcanoes are releasing water vapor or phosphine into the atmosphere.

    Ganymede has water vapor-could it have life?

    Planets aren’t the only type of world that could sustain life; Several of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have been particularly interesting to astrobiologists. And scientists studying Hubble images have found evidence that water vapor exists in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Since water is essential to life on Earth, this discovery will prompt further study of this moon.

    A new class of exoplanets to study

    A group of scientists identified a new class of exoplanets, Hycean (hydrogen-ocean) worlds, which are covered with oceans and boast hydrogen-rich atmospheres. These planets are numerous and, thanks to their size, easier to find than small, rocky, Earth-like planets. They are also thought to be quite warm, making it possible for microbial life to thrive beneath their surface.

    With the launch of the James Webb Telescope, researchers are hoping to learn more about these interesting candidates for life beyond Earth.

    Laser SETI begins installation in Hawaii

    While the ATA searches the skies for radio signals, LaserSETI will examine star systems for laser flashes that could indicate the presence of an advanced civilization.


    In late September, the SETI Institute’s Eliot Guillum began setting up the latest LaserSETI hardware in Haleakala, Hawaii.

    LaserSETI observatory installation at Haleakala Observatory in Maui, Hawai’i (US)

    Signals for Proxima Centauri aren’t from aliens

    Shortly before Halloween, researchers published two papers analyzing the signal detected in 2019 by Breakthrough Listen. The signal appeared to originate near Proxima Centauri and generated significant buzz when it was first announced.

    After additional research, SETI scientists concluded the signal most likely didn’t come from aliens but rather malfunctioning equipment on Earth. Dr. Andrew Siemion contributed to both papers and Dr. Sofia Sheikh, who will join the team at the Allen Telescope Array team in January, was the lead author on one.

    See the full article here .

    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition
    SETI Institute

    About the SETI Institute

    What is life? How does it begin? Are we alone? These are some of the questions we ask in our quest to learn about and share the wonders of the universe. At the SETI Institute we have a passion for discovery and for passing knowledge along as scientific ambassadors.

    The SETI Institute is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit scientific research institute headquartered in Mountain View, California. We are a key research contractor to NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and we collaborate with industry partners throughout Silicon Valley and beyond.

    Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute employs more than 130 scientists, educators, and administrative staff. Work at the SETI Institute is anchored by three centers: the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe (research), the Center for Education and the Center for Outreach.

    The SETI Institute welcomes philanthropic support from individuals, private foundations, corporations and other groups to support our education and outreach initiatives, as well as unfunded scientific research and fieldwork.

    A Special Thank You to SETI Institute Partners and Collaborators
    • Campoalto, Chile, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Headquarters, National Science Foundation, Aerojet Rocketdyne,SRI International

    Frontier Development Lab Partners
    • Breakthrough Prize Foundation, European Space Agency, Google Cloud, IBM, Intel, KBRwyle. Kx Lockheed Martin, NASA Ames Research Center, Nvidia, SpaceResources Luxembourg, XPrize

    In-kind Service Providers
    • Gunderson Dettmer – General legal services, Hello Pilgrim – Website Design and Development Steptoe & Johnson – IP legal services, Danielle Futselaar

    SETI/Allen Telescope Array situated at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, 290 miles (470 km) northeast of San Francisco, California, USA, Altitude 986 m (3,235 ft), the origins of the Institute’s search.

    SETI Institute – 189 Bernardo Ave., Suite 100
    Mountain View, CA 94043
    Phone 650.961.6633 – Fax 650-961-7099
    Privacy Policy – Questions and Comments

    Also in the hunt, but not a part of the SETI Institute

    SETI@home, a BOINC [Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing] project originated in the Space Science Lab at UC Berkeley.

    BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, developed at UC Berkeley.

     

  • richardmitnick 8:52 am on May 27, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "Meteors from rare long-period comets", CAMS-Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance, , Long-period comets may take thousands of years to orbit our sun once., SETI Institute, The CAMS project now has networks of cameras in nine countries including Australia; Chile; and Namibia.   

    From SETI Institute via EarthSky : “Meteors from rare long-period comets” 


    From SETI Institute

    via

    1

    EarthSky

    May 27, 2021
    Kelly Kizer Whitt

    1
    Long-period comets may take thousands of years to orbit our sun once. This artist’s concept shows the meteoroid stream from long-period Comet Thatcher entering the solar system and looping around the sun. The outer blue ellipse is the orbit of Neptune. Comet Thatcher is responsible for April’s Lyrid meteor shower. Image via P. Jenniskens/ SETI Institute.

    Around the world, a network of low-light video security cameras are pointed at dark skies, capturing faint meteors and using triangulation to determine their trajectories and orbits. Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute leads this project, which is called CAMS-Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance. He said in May 2021 that he’s using the data to discover that some long-period comets, with orbits up to 4,000 years long, are the sources of some of the meteors captured by CAMS. The passes of these comets might sometimes create a meteor rain, he said, plus the potential for an impact by a comet. He said:

    “Until recently, we only knew five long-period comets to be parent bodies to one of our meteor showers, but now we identified nine more, and perhaps as many as 15”.

    The results of this new meteor shower survey were published this month in the peer-reviewed journal Icarus.

    CAMS stands for Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance. The project now has networks of cameras in nine countries, including Australia, Chile and Namibia. The thin trail of debris left behind by long-period comets can be hard to detect, but the CAMS network has approximately doubled the number of meteor showers known to come from this type of comet.

    Interactive map of CAMS data

    The worldwide cameras have pinpointed the locations that meteors appear to come from – known as the radiant – and enabled scientists to create an interactive map of the data. The meteors appear as colored dots on the map. Red denotes the fastest meteors and blue the slowest. White dots represent sporadic meteors that do not come from any specific shower. The black dots on the map are stars. You can change the date on the map to find what meteors were detected on a certain date. Jenniskens described the interactive map:

    “These are the shooting stars you see with the unaided eye. By tracing their approach direction, these maps show the sky and the universe around us in a very different light.”

    2
    Taken from the interactive map, the cluster of yellow dots in this diagram are meteors from the Lyrid radiant picked up by CAMS data. These meteors came from the long-period Comet Thatcher. Image via P. Jenniskens/ SETI Institute.

    Comets are not the main source of debris that impacts with Earth. However, historically they have caused some of the biggest impact events due to their large size and fast speed. The new survey results allow these faint, long-distant comets from as far back as 4,000 years to be spotted via the meteors left behind. Jenniskens said:

    “This creates a situational awareness for potentially hazardous comets that were last in near-Earth orbit as far back as 2,000 BC.”

    CAMS data reveal long-period comets

    The team of scientists analyzed their data to find something unexpected: Long-period comet meteor showers can last for many days. Jenniskens said:

    “This was a surprise to me. It probably means that these comets returned to the solar system many times in the past, while their orbits gradually changed over time.”

    The team also discovered that the most dispersed meteor showers show the highest fraction of small meteoroids. Jenniskens explained why this might be:

    “The most dispersed showers are probably the oldest ones. So, this could mean that the larger meteoroids fall apart into smaller meteoroids over time.”

    The team hopes to go even farther into the past with help from CAMS. Jenniskens explained:

    “In the future, with more observations, we may be able to detect fainter showers and trace the orbit of parent comets on even longer orbits.”

    Long-period Comet Thatcher and the Lyrids

    Comet Thatcher, shown in the above mapping examples, is a previously known long-period comet that’s responsible for the Lyrid meteor shower. Thatcher returns to the sun every 415 years, with its next arrival in our vicinity scheduled for approximately 2283 A.D. When not in the inner solar system, Comet Thatcher journeys as far out as 110 astronomical units (AU) from the sun.

    In contrast, Pluto is about 40 AU from the sun.

    4
    View at EarthSky Community Photos. | You don’t have to be an astronomer to capture meteors. This image is from Cecilia Ray in Sedona, Arizona: the Milky Way and a meteor on April 14, 2021. She wrote: “I was running a time lapse of the Milky Way rising. As I went through about 600 images, this meteor appeared only in this photo. Unbelievable. This was my first Milky Way.” Thank you, Cecilia!

    See the full article here .

    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    SETI Institute


    About the SETI Institute
    What is life? How does it begin? Are we alone? These are some of the questions we ask in our quest to learn about and share the wonders of the universe. At the SETI Institute we have a passion for discovery and for passing knowledge along as scientific ambassadors.

    The SETI Institute is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit scientific research institute headquartered in Mountain View, California. We are a key research contractor to NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and we collaborate with industry partners throughout Silicon Valley and beyond.

    Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute employs more than 130 scientists, educators, and administrative staff. Work at the SETI Institute is anchored by three centers: the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe (research), the Center for Education and the Center for Outreach.

    The SETI Institute welcomes philanthropic support from individuals, private foundations, corporations and other groups to support our education and outreach initiatives, as well as unfunded scientific research and fieldwork.

    A Special Thank You to SETI Institute Partners and Collaborators
    • Campoalto, Chile, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Headquarters, National Science Foundation, Aerojet Rocketdyne,SRI International

    Frontier Development Lab Partners
    • Breakthrough Prize Foundation, European Space Agency, Google Cloud, IBM, Intel, KBRwyle. Kx Lockheed Martin, NASA Ames Research Center, Nvidia, SpaceResources Luxembourg, XPrize

    In-kind Service Providers
    • Gunderson Dettmer – General legal services, Hello Pilgrim – Website Design and Development Steptoe & Johnson – IP legal services, Danielle Futselaar

    SETI/Allen Telescope Array situated at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, 290 miles (470 km) northeast of San Francisco, California, USA, Altitude 986 m (3,235 ft)

    SETI Institute – 189 Bernardo Ave., Suite 100
    Mountain View, CA 94043
    Phone 650.961.6633 – Fax 650-961-7099
    Privacy Policy – Questions and Comments

    Also in the hunt, but not a part of the SETI Institute

    SETI@home, a BOINC [Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing] project originated in the Space Science Lab at UC Berkeley.


    BOINCLarge

    BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, developed at UC Berkeley.

     

  • richardmitnick 9:51 am on February 25, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "If Aliens Exist Here’s How We’ll Find Them", , , , , But suppose we are not alone. What evidence would we expect to find?, , Don’t expect mass emigration from Earth. It’s a dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s problems., Even if messages were being transmitted we may not recognize them as artificial because we may not know how to decode them., Fermi Paradox—the surprise expressed by physicist Enrico Fermi over the absence of any signs for the existence of other intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way., Few doubt machines will gradually surpass or enhance more and more of our distinctively human capabilities., If those hypothetical aliens continued to keep watch what would they witness in the next century?, Let’s think specifically about the future of space exploration. Successful missions such as Viking; Cassini; New Horizons; Juno; and Rosetta were all done with last-century technology., Machine learning is advancing fast as is sensor technology. In contrast the cost gap between crewed and autonomous missions remains huge., , One of the most plausible long-term energy sources available to an advanced technology is starlight., Powerful alien civilizations might build a mega-structure known as a “Dyson Sphere” to harvest stellar energy from one star or many stars or even from an entire galaxy., SETI Institute, SETI so far has focused on the radio part of the spectrum. But we should explore all wavebands including the optical and X-ray band., Suppose aliens existed., Technological evolution of intelligent beings is only just beginning., , The habit of referring to “alien civilizations” may in itself be too restrictive., The most crucial impediment to space flight stems from the intrinsic inefficiency of chemical fuel and the requirement to carry a weight of fuel far exceeding that of the payload., We believe the future of crewed spaceflight lies with privately funded adventurers like SpaceX and Blue Origin., We can realistically expect that during this century the entire solar system—planets; moons; and asteroids—will be explored by flotillas of robotic spacecraft., We would argue that inspirationally led private companies should front all missions involving humans as cut-price high-risk ventures., Will an armada of spacecraft launched from Earth spawn new oases of life elsewhere?   

    From Nautilus: “If Aliens Exist Here’s How We’ll Find Them” 

    From Nautilus

    February 24, 2021
    Martin Rees & Mario Livio

    Suppose aliens existed, and imagine that some of them had been watching our planet for its entire four and a half billion years. What would they have seen? Over most of that vast timespan, Earth’s appearance altered slowly and gradually. Continents drifted; ice cover waxed and waned; successive species emerged, evolved, with many of them becoming extinct.

    But in just a tiny sliver of Earth’s history—the last hundred centuries—the patterns of vegetation altered much faster than before. This signaled the start of agriculture—and later urbanization. The changes accelerated as the human population increased.

    Then came even faster changes. Within just a century, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere began to rise dangerously fast. Radio emissions that couldn’t be explained by natural processes appeared and something else unprecedented happened: Rockets launched from the planet’s surface escaped the biosphere completely. Some spacecraft were propelled into orbits around the Earth; others journeyed to the moon, Mars, Jupiter, and even Pluto.

    If those hypothetical aliens continued to keep watch, what would they witness in the next century? Will a final spasm of activity be followed by silence due to climate change? Or will the planet’s ecology stabilize? Will there be massive terraforming? Will an armada of spacecraft launched from Earth spawn new oases of life elsewhere?

    1
    LASER POWER: A crucial impediment to space flight is the inefficiency of chemical fuel. One day a laser power station, located on Earth, might generate a beam to “push” a craft through space. Credit: NASA / Pat Rawlings (SAIC).

    Let’s think specifically about the future of space exploration. Successful missions such as Viking, Cassini, New Horizons, Juno, and Rosetta were all done with last-century technology.

    NASA/Viking 1 Lander


    NASA Viking 2 Lander

    NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens Spacecraft.

    NASA/New Horizons spacecraft.

    NASA/Juno at Jupiter.

    ESA/Rosetta spacecraft, European Space Agency’s legendary comet explorer Rosetta annotated.

    We can realistically expect that during this century, the entire solar system—planets, moons, and asteroids—will be explored by flotillas of robotic craft.

    Will there still be a role for humans in crewed spacecraft?

    There’s no denying that NASA’s new Perseverance rover speeding across the Jezero crater on Mars may miss some startling discoveries that no human geologist could reasonably overlook.

    Perseverence

    NASA Perseverance Mars Rover annotated.

    But machine learning is advancing fast, as is sensor technology. In contrast, the cost gap between crewed and autonomous missions remains huge.

    We believe the future of crewed spaceflight lies with privately funded adventurers like SpaceX and Blue Origin, prepared to participate in a cut-price program far riskier than western nations could impose on publicly supported projects. These ventures—bringing a Silicon-Valley-type culture into a domain long-dominated by NASA and a few aerospace conglomerates—have innovated and improved rocketry far faster than NASA or the European Space Agency have done. The future role of the national agencies will be attenuated—becoming more akin to an airport rather than to an airline.

    We would argue that inspirationally led private companies should front all missions involving humans as cut-price high-risk ventures. There would still be many volunteers—a few perhaps even accepting one-way tickets—driven by the same motives as early explorers and mountaineers. The phrase “space tourism” should be avoided. It lulls people into believing such ventures are routine and low-risk. If that’s the perception, the inevitable accidents will be as traumatic as those of the space shuttle were. These exploits must be sold as dangerous, extreme sports, or intrepid exploration.

    The most crucial impediment to space flight stems from the intrinsic inefficiency of chemical fuel and the requirement to carry a weight of fuel far exceeding that of the payload. So long as we are dependent on chemical fuels, interplanetary travel will remain a challenge. Nuclear power could be transformative. Allowing much higher in-course speeds would drastically cut the transit times in the solar system, reducing not only astronauts’ boredom, but their exposure to damaging radiation. It’s more efficient if the fuel supply can be on the ground; for instance, propelling spacecraft into orbit via a “space elevator”—and then using a “star-shot”-type laser beam generated on Earth to push on a “sail” attached to the spacecraft.

    By 2100, thrill seekers in the mold of Felix Baumgartner (the Austrian skydiver who in 2012 broke the sound barrier in free fall from a high-altitude balloon) may have established bases on Mars, or maybe even on asteroids. Elon Musk has said he wants to die on Mars—“but not on impact.” It’s a realistic goal, and an alluring one to some.

    But don’t expect mass emigration from Earth. It’s a dangerous delusion to think that space offers an escape from Earth’s problems. We’ve got to solve those here. Coping with climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic may seem daunting, but it’s a piece of cake compared to terraforming Mars. There’s no place in our solar system that offers an environment even as clement as the Antarctic or the top of Mount Everest. Simply put, there’s no Planet B for ordinary risk-averse people.

    Still, we (and our progeny here on Earth) should cheer on the brave space adventurers. They have a pivotal role to play in spearheading the post-human future and determining what happens in the 22nd century and beyond.

    Pioneer explorers will be ill-adapted to their new habitat, so they will have a compelling incentive to re-design themselves. They’ll harness the super-powerful genetic and cyborg technologies that will be developed in coming decades. This might be the first step toward divergence into a new species.

    Organic creatures need a planetary surface environment on which life could emerge and evolve. But if post-humans make the transition to fully inorganic intelligence, they won’t need an atmosphere. They may even prefer zero-gravity, especially for constructing massive artifacts. It’s in deep space that non-biological brains may develop powers that humans can’t even imagine.

    There are chemical and metabolic limits to the size and processing power of organic brains. Maybe we are close to these limits already. But no such limits apply to or constrain electronic computers (still less, perhaps, quantum computers). So, by any definition of “thinking,” the amount and intensity that can be achieved by organic human-type brains will be swamped by the cerebrations of AI.

    We are perhaps near the end of Darwinian evolution, but technological evolution of intelligent beings is only just beginning. It may happen fastest away from Earth—we wouldn’t expect (and certainly wouldn’t wish for) such rapid changes in humanity here on the Earth, though our survival may depend on ensuring the AI on Earth remains “benevolent.”

    Few doubt machines will gradually surpass or enhance more and more of our distinctively human capabilities. Disagreements are only about the timescale on which this will happen. Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil says it will be just a matter of a few decades. More cautious scientists envisage centuries. Either way, the timescales for technological advances are an instant compared to the timescales of the Darwinian evolution that led to humanity’s emergence—and more relevantly, less than a millionth of the vast expanses of cosmic time ahead. The products of future technological evolution could surpass humans by as much as we have surpassed slime mold.

    But, you may wonder, what about consciousness?

    Philosophers and computer scientists debate whether consciousness is something that characterizes only the type of wet, organic brains possessed by humans, apes, and dogs. Would electronic intelligences, even if their intellects would seem superhuman, lack self-awareness? The ability to imagine things that do not exist? An inner life? Or is consciousness an emergent property that any sufficiently complex network will eventually possess? Some say it’s irrelevant and semantic, like asking whether submarines can swim.

    We don’t think it is. If the machines are what computer scientists refer to as “zombies,” we would not accord their experiences the same value as ours, and the post-human future would seem rather bleak. On the other hand, if they are conscious, we should welcome the prospect of their future hegemony.

    What will their guiding motivation be if they become fully autonomous entities? We have to admit we have absolutely no idea. Think of the variety of bizarre motives (ideological, financial, political, egotistical, and religious) that have driven human endeavors in the past. Here’s one simple example of how different they could be from our naive expectations: They could be contemplative. Even less obtrusively, they may realize it’s easier to think at low temperatures, therefore getting far away from any star, or even hibernating for billions of years until the cosmic microwave background cooled down far below its current 3 degrees Kelvin. At the other edge of the spectrum, they could be expansionist, which seems to be the expectation of most who’ve thought about the future trajectory of civilizations.

    Even if life had originated only on Earth, it need not remain a marginal, trivial feature of the cosmos. Humans could jump-start a diaspora whereby ever-more complex intelligence spreads through the galaxy, transcending our limitations. The “sphere of influence” (or some would envisage a “frontier of conquest”) could encompass the entire galaxy, spreading via self-reproducing machines, transmitting DNA or instructions for 3-D printers. The leap to neighboring stars is just an early step in this process. Interstellar voyages—or even intergalactic voyages—would hold no terrors for near-immortals.

    Moreover, even if the only propellants used were the currently known ones, this galactic colonization would take less time, measured from today, than the more than 500 million years elapsed since the Cambrian explosion. And even less than the 55 million years since the advent of primates, if it proceeds relativistically.

    The expansionist scenarios would have the consequence that our descendants would become so conspicuous that any alien civilization would become aware of them.

    The crucial question remains: Are there other expansionists whose domain may impinge on ours?

    We don’t know. The emergence of intelligence may require such a rare chain of events and happenstance contingencies—like winning a lottery—that it has not occurred anywhere else. That will disappoint SETI searchers and explain the so-called Fermi Paradox—the surprise expressed by physicist Enrico Fermi over the absence of any signs for the existence of other intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way. But suppose we are not alone. What evidence would we expect to find?

    2
    The Allen Telescope Array, located at the Hat Creek Observatory in the Cascade Mountains, about 300 miles north of San Francisco, makes astronomical observations and stays attuned to signs of extraterrestrial life. Credit: Seth Shostak / SETI Institute.


    SETI@home, a BOINC [Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing] project originated in the Space Science Lab at UC Berkeley.

    Suppose that there are indeed many other planets where life emerged, and that on some of them Darwinian evolution followed a similar track to the one on Earth. Even then, it’s highly unlikely that the key stages would be synchronized. If the emergence of intelligence and technology on a planet lags significantly behind what has happened on Earth (because, for example, the planet is younger, or because some bottlenecks in evolution have taken longer to negotiate) then that planet would reveal no evidence of ET. Earth itself would probably not have been detected as a life-bearing planet during the first 2 billion years of its existence.

    But around a star older than the sun, life could have had a head start of a billion years or more. Note that the current age of the solar system is about half the age of our galaxy and also half of the sun’s predicted total lifetime. We expect that a significant fraction of the stars in our galaxy are older than the sun.

    The history of human technological civilization is measured in mere millennia. It may be only a few more centuries before humans are overtaken or transcended by inorganic intelligence, which will then persist, continuing to evolve on a faster-than-Darwinian timescale for billions of years. Organic human-level intelligence may be, generically, just a brief interlude before the machines take over, so if alien intelligence had evolved similarly, we’d be most unlikely to catch it in the brief sliver of time when it was still embodied in that form. Were we to detect ET, it would be far more likely to be electronic where the dominant creatures aren’t flesh and blood—and perhaps aren’t even tied to a planetary surface.

    Astronomical observations have now demystified many of the probability factors in the so-called Drake Equation—the probabilistic attempt traditionally used to estimate the number of advanced civilizations in the Milky Way.

    Frank Drake with his Drake Equation. Credit Frank Drake.

    Drake Equation, Frank Drake, Seti Institute.

    The number of potentially habitable planets has changed from being completely unknown only a couple of decades ago to being directly determined from the observations. At the same time, we must reinterpret one of the key factors in the Drake equation. The lifetime of an organic civilization may be millennia at most. But its electronic diaspora could continue for billions of years.

    If SETI succeeded, it would then be unlikely that the signal would be a decodable message. It would more likely reveal a byproduct (or maybe even a malfunction) of some super-complex machine beyond our comprehension.

    The habit of referring to “alien civilizations” may in itself be too restrictive. A civilization connotes a society of individuals. In contrast, ET might be a single integrated intelligence. Even if messages were being transmitted, we may not recognize them as artificial because we may not know how to decode them, in the same way that a veteran radio engineer familiar only with amplitude-modulation (AM) transmission might have a hard time decoding modern wireless communications. Indeed, compression techniques aim to make the signal as close to noise as possible; insofar as a signal is predictable, there’s scope for more compression.

    SETI so far has focused on the radio part of the spectrum. But we should explore all wavebands, including the optical and X-ray band. We should also be alert for other evidence of non-natural phenomena or activity. What might then be a relatively generic signature? Energy consumption, one of the potential hallmarks of an advanced civilization, appears to be hard to conceal.

    One of the most plausible long-term energy sources available to an advanced technology is starlight. Powerful alien civilizations might build a mega-structure known as a “Dyson Sphere” to harvest stellar energy from one star or many stars or even from an entire galaxy.

    The other potential long-term energy source is controlled fusion of hydrogen into heavier nuclei. In both cases, waste heat and a detectable mid-infrared signature would be an inevitable outcome. Or, one might seek evidence for massive artifacts such as the Dyson Sphere itself. Intriguingly, it’s worth looking for artifacts within our own solar system: Maybe we can rule out visits by human-scale aliens, but if an extraterrestrial civilization had mastered nanotechnology and transferred its intelligence to machines, the “invasion” might consist of a swarm of microscopic probes that could have evaded notice. Still, it would be easier to send a radio or laser signal than to traverse the mind-boggling distances of interstellar space.

    Finally, let’s fast forward not for just a few millennia, but for an astronomical timescale, millions of times longer. As interstellar gas will be consumed, the ecology of stellar births and deaths in our galaxy will proceed more gradually, until jolted by the environmental shock of a collision with the Andromeda galaxy, about 4.5 billion years hence. The debris of our galaxy, Andromeda, and their smaller companions (known as the Local Group) will aggregate into one amorphous (or perhaps elliptical) galaxy. Due to the accelerating cosmic expansion, distant galaxies will move farther away, receding faster and faster until they disappear—rather like objects falling into a black hole—encountering a horizon beyond which they are lost from view and causal contact. But the remnants of our Local Group could continue for a far longer time. Long enough perhaps for what has been dubbed a “Kardashev Type III” phenomenon, in which a civilization is using the energy from one or more galaxies, and perhaps even that released from supermassive black holes, to emerge as the culmination of the long-term trend for living systems to gain complexity and negative entropy (a higher degree of order).

    The only limitations set by fundamental physics would be the number of accessible protons (since those can in principle be transmuted into any elements), and the total amount of accessible energy (E=mc2, where m is mass and c is the speed of light) again transformable from one form to another.

    Essentially all the atoms that were once in stars and gas could be transformed into structures as intricate as a living organism or silicon chips but on a cosmic scale. A few science-fiction authors envisage stellar-scale engineering to create black holes and wormholes—concepts far beyond any technological capability that we can imagine, but not in violation of basic physical laws.

    If we want to go to further extremes, the total mass-energy content in the Local Group isn’t the limit of the available resources. It would still be consistent with physical laws for an incredibly advanced civilization to lasso the galaxies that are receding because of the cosmic expansion of space before they accelerate and disappear over the horizon. Such a hyper-intelligent species could pull them in to construct a segment resembling Einstein’s original idea of a static universe in equilibrium, with a mean density such that the cosmic repulsion caused by dark energy is precisely balanced by gravity.

    Everything we’ve said is consistent with the laws of physics and the cosmological model as we understand them. Our speculations assume that the repulsive force causing cosmic acceleration persists (and is described by dark energy or Einstein’s cosmological constant). But we should be open-minded about the possibility that there is much we don’t understand.

    Human brains have changed relatively little since our ancestors roamed the African savannah and coped with the challenges that life then presented. It is surely remarkable that these brains have allowed us to make sense of the quantum subatomic world and the cosmos at large—far removed from the common sense, everyday world in which we have evolved.

    Scientific frontiers are now advancing fast. But we may at some point hit the buffers. There may be phenomena, some of which may be crucial to our long-term destiny, that we are not aware of any more than a gorilla comprehends the nature of stars and galaxies. Physical reality could encompass complexities that neither our intellect nor our senses can grasp. Electronic brains may have a rather different perception of reality. Consequently, we cannot predict or perhaps even understand the motives of such brains. We cannot assess whether the Fermi paradox signifies their absence or simply their preference.

    Conjectures about advanced or intelligent life are shakier than those about simple life. Yet there are three features that may characterize the entities that SETI searches could reveal.

    • Intelligent life is likely not to be organic or biological

    • It will not remain on the surface of the planet where its biological precursor emerged and evolved.

    • We will not be able to fathom the intentions of such life forms.

    Two familiar maxims should pertain to all SETI searches. On one hand, “absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence,” but on the other, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

    See the full article here .

    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    Welcome to Nautilus. We are delighted you joined us. We are here to tell you about science and its endless connections to our lives. Each month we choose a single topic. And each Thursday we publish a new chapter on that topic online. Each issue combines the sciences, culture and philosophy into a single story told by the world’s leading thinkers and writers. We follow the story wherever it leads us. Read our essays, investigative reports, and blogs. Fiction, too. Take in our games, videos, and graphic stories. Stop in for a minute, or an hour. Nautilus lets science spill over its usual borders. We are science, connected.

     

  • richardmitnick 1:41 pm on December 22, 2020 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "An updated way to calculate the likelihood of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations", , , , , , , , , SETI Institute   

    From NASA JPL Caltech and From Caltech via phys.org: “An updated way to calculate the likelihood of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations” 

    NASA JPL Banner

    From NASA JPL-Caltech

    and

    Caltech Logo

    From Caltech

    via


    phys.org

    December 22, 2020
    Bob Yirka , Phys.org

    1
    Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

    A small team of researchers from California Institute of Technology, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Santiago High School has developed an updated version of an old equation to calculate the likely existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. The team has uploaded their paper to the arXiv preprint server [A Statistical Estimation of the Occurrence of Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the Milky Way Galaxy].

    Over the span of human history, many have wondered if life exists on other planets—intelligent or otherwise. As new tools have been applied to the question, many space scientists have become convinced that the likelihood of extraterrestrial civilizations developing seems more probable than not given all that has been learned. As other exoplanet systems have been found, many circling stars very similar to our sun, it has become difficult to find anything unique about our own planet to justify a belief that Earth alone ever produced life. In this new effort, the researchers have expanded on research done by Frank Drake back in 1961.

    Frank Drake with his Drake Equation. Credit Frank Drake.


    Drake Equation, Frank Drake, Seti Institute.




    SETI Institute


    SETI/Allen Telescope Array situated at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, 290 miles (470 km) northeast of San Francisco, California, USA, Altitude 986 m (3,235 ft), the origins of the Institute’s search.

    He and his colleagues developed an equation (now known as the Drake equation) to calculate the odds of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations—given all that was known about space and astronomical objects back then. The researchers factored in such variables as the number of believed exoplanets and star systems and how many of them were likely to be capable of supporting life.

    Space scientists have learned a lot more about space and celestial objects since Drake’s time—exoplanets have been observed, for example, some in their own Goldilocks zones, and scientists have learned more about the age of the universe and circumstances after the Big Bang. The researchers with this new effort took all the new factors into account and added something else not considered in 1961—the likelihood of other extraterrestrial civilizations arising and then unintentionally killing themselves off. Humans and other animals have a way of destroying their environment. Rats introduced to an island will eat every last scrap of food, for example, and then all of them will starve to death. Humans pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and confront a future in which the planet can no longer support life. The researchers suggest such evidence likely means that if extraterrestrial civilizations have arisen, most of them are probably gone by now due to their inability to prevent their own demise.

    The result of the team’s work is not an estimate of the likelihood of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations, but a new formula that others can use to make their own calculations based on what they believe to be true.

    See the full article here .


    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech) is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering. Its 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located approximately 11 mi (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles. “The mission of the California Institute of Technology is to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education. We investigate the most challenging, fundamental problems in science and technology in a singularly collegial, interdisciplinary atmosphere, while educating outstanding students to become creative members of society.”

    Caltech campus

    NASA JPL Campus

    Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although the facility has a Pasadena postal address, it is actually headquartered in the city of La Cañada Flintridge, on the northwest border of Pasadena. JPL is managed by the nearby California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Laboratory’s primary function is the construction and operation of robotic planetary spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating NASA’s Deep Space Network.

    Caltech Logo

     

  • richardmitnick 11:51 am on December 19, 2020 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "A Signal from Proxima Centauri?", Astronomers with the Breakthrough Listen Project have detected radio emissions from the direction of Proxima Centauri., , , , , , SETI Institute, The Breakthrough Listen folk are careful not to indulge in any chest beating until the signal is subjected to additional observations., The signal was picked up by the Australian Parkes 210-foot radio telescope., Well it might be aliens. Then again in the tradition of Pogo it might just be us- led astray by our own technology.   

    From SETI Institute: “A Signal from Proxima Centauri?” 



    From SETI Institute

    Dec 19, 2020
    By Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer

    1
    CSIRO/Parkes Observatory, located 20 kilometres north of the town of Parkes, New South Wales, Australia, 414.80m above sea level.

    Well, it might be aliens. Then again, in the tradition of Pogo it might just be us, led astray by our own technology.

    A story in Britain’s Guardian newspaper today (December 18) reports that astronomers with the Breakthrough Listen Project – the comprehensive radio SETI search being run out of the University of California at Berkeley – has detected radio emissions from the direction of Proxima Centauri.

    ____________________________________________________________________________________________________
    Breakthrough Listen Project

    1

    UC Observatories Lick Autmated Planet Finder, fully robotic 2.4-meter optical telescope at Lick Observatory, situated on the summit of Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose, California, USA




    GBO radio telescope, Green Bank, West Virginia, USA


    CSIRO/Parkes Observatory, located 20 kilometres north of the town of Parkes, New South Wales, Australia


    SKA SARAO Meerkat telescope, 90 km outside the small Northern Cape town of Carnarvon, SA.


    Newly added

    CfA/VERITAS, a major ground-based gamma-ray observatory with an array of four Čerenkov Telescopes for gamma-ray astronomy in the GeV – TeV energy range. Located at Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory,Mount Hopkins, Arizona, US in AZ, USA, Altitude 2,606 m (8,550 ft)


    ____________________________________________________________________________________________________

    That’s the closest star system to us, a mere 4.2 light-years away, and it’s known to be accompanied by at least two planets.

    The signal was picked up by the Parkes 210-foot radio telescope in sheep country about 190 miles inland from Sydney, Australia. Because Proxima Centauri is only visible in the southern sky, you need a “down under” telescope to observe it.

    But does this mean that SETI researchers have finally stumbled upon their holy grail, a radio emission that could only come from a deliberately constructed transmitter on another world? It’s possible, of course. But the Breakthrough Listen folk are careful not to indulge in any chest beating until the signal is subjected to additional observations.

    So, what are the possible implications of this finding? Let us count the ways:

    To begin, the signal apparently varies slightly in frequency, wobbling up and down the radio dial. So it’s not coming from an antenna bolted to the ground here on Earth. That immediately makes it non-terrestrial by definition, but still doesn’t certify it as alien.

    Indeed, it just might be a telemetry signal from an orbiting satellite. The orbital motion of these satellites cause their transmissions to rise and fall in frequency, after all. And while you might think that the chances of accidentally tuning in a satellite are not great, you should think again. There are more than 2,700 functioning satellites buzzing our planet, providing information on the weather, imagery for Google Earth, GPS signals for navigation, and high-resolution photos for the military, just to name a few. This flood of information from hardware a few hundred miles above our heads is obviously important for a high-tech lifestyle, but it jams a lot of the radio spectrum. SETI scientists are trying to find a needle in a pile of pins.

    But if it’s not a satellite signal, what else might it be? It’s possible that the signal is actually coming from something behind Proxima Centauri that just happens to line up with it. There’s an example of this coming your way next week, when Jupiter will seem to be intruding upon Saturn’s personal space as the two planets get close in the evening sky. On December 21, their separation will be only 6 arcmin, or about the width of a dime held at 20 feet. But of course Jupiter and Saturn won’t actually be close. You’d find 500 million miles of uninteresting space behind Jupiter before you encountered the ring thing. They just appear to line up.

    So maybe that’s what’s going on: the signal’s not coming from Proxima Centauri, but from something else far beyond it. Maybe, but that would still be extremely interesting, as natural radio signals – the type produced by quasars, pulsars, and many other members of the cosmic bestiary – are not narrow-band. They’re not confined to a small range of frequencies, and this signal might be.

    Of course, there’s always the possibility that the signal is really, really local. A microwave oven in the break room of the Parkes radio telescope caused considerable consternation five years ago when it produced signals that, at first, suggested that something remarkable was happening in the distant cosmos. In fact, it was just someone heating up lunch.

    So, given even this short laundry list, we see that there are several possible explanations for the signal that are, regrettably, rather prosaic. Yes, as long as we still don’t know, we should continue to consider the alien hypothesis viable. After all, any SETI detection is going to be dicey when we first make it … there will be plenty of calls for restraint intended to pacify the all-too-eager. But it’s reasonable to expect that someday one of these suspicious signals will, indeed, be the sought-after proof of intelligence on another world.

    Caution is often a good idea, but one must be careful not to toss the baby with the bathwater. After all, this baby could change our concept of the cosmos.

    See the full article here .

    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    SETI Institute


    About the SETI Institute
    What is life? How does it begin? Are we alone? These are some of the questions we ask in our quest to learn about and share the wonders of the universe. At the SETI Institute we have a passion for discovery and for passing knowledge along as scientific ambassadors.

    The SETI Institute is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit scientific research institute headquartered in Mountain View, California. We are a key research contractor to NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and we collaborate with industry partners throughout Silicon Valley and beyond.

    Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute employs more than 130 scientists, educators, and administrative staff. Work at the SETI Institute is anchored by three centers: the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe (research), the Center for Education and the Center for Outreach.

    The SETI Institute welcomes philanthropic support from individuals, private foundations, corporations and other groups to support our education and outreach initiatives, as well as unfunded scientific research and fieldwork.

    A Special Thank You to SETI Institute Partners and Collaborators
    • Campoalto, Chile, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Headquarters, National Science Foundation, Aerojet Rocketdyne,SRI International

    Frontier Development Lab Partners
    • Breakthrough Prize Foundation, European Space Agency, Google Cloud, IBM, Intel, KBRwyle. Kx Lockheed Martin, NASA Ames Research Center, Nvidia, SpaceResources Luxembourg, XPrize

    In-kind Service Providers
    • Gunderson Dettmer – General legal services, Hello Pilgrim – Website Design and Development Steptoe & Johnson – IP legal services, Danielle Futselaar

    SETI/Allen Telescope Array situated at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, 290 miles (470 km) northeast of San Francisco, California, USA, Altitude 986 m (3,235 ft)

    SETI Institute – 189 Bernardo Ave., Suite 100
    Mountain View, CA 94043
    Phone 650.961.6633 – Fax 650-961-7099
    Privacy Policy – Questions and Comments

    Also in the hunt, but not a part of the SETI Institute

    SETI@home, a BOINC [Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing] project originated in the Space Science Lab at UC Berkeley.


    BOINCLarge

    BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, developed at UC Berkeley.

     

  • richardmitnick 7:27 pm on December 5, 2020 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: "Celestial Mystery: Interplanetary Object or a Human-made 'Asteroid?'", , , , , SETI Institute   

    From SETI Institute: “Celestial Mystery: Interplanetary Object or a Human-made ‘Asteroid?'” 



    From SETI Institute

    Dec 4, 2020
    Franck M.


    2020SO: Not a mini-moon but a space trash?!

    Interplanetary threat or human-made traveler? That’s the mystery of 2020 SO1, a Near-Earth Asteroid (a population of asteroids with an orbit very close to Earth), discovered in August 2020 by the Hawaiian ground-based telescope Pan-STARRS1.

    Pan-STARRS 1, located at the summit of Haleakalā on Maui, Hawaii, Hawaii USA , Altitude 3,052 m (10,013 ft).

    After spotting 2020 SO1, astronomers observed it continuously and estimated that this small 5m-asteroid would pass near Earth on December 1, 2020. Several citizen astronomers around the world, including members of the Unistellar network, collaborated to capture it. And one of them got it!

    Mario Billiani, a Unistellar citizen astronomer located in Vienna, Austria, captured the object from his home. The observation was challenging because the target was faint for the 4.6” aperture digital telescope, and it was moving very fast in the sky. Together with our science team at the SETI Institute, Mario learned how to calculate the asteroid’s location from his home using the NASA-JPL ephemeris.

    2
    We reported Mario’s observation to the Minor Planet Center and, along with other observations taken by professional and amateur astronomers around the world, will help refine 2020SO1’s orbit.

    The video below clearly shows how unusual this orbit is. In March 2020, after a close encounter with Earth, the body will stay in the so-called Hill sphere (the gravitational sphere of influence around Earth) and come back near Earth in February. It will leave the Earth-Moon system in March.


    2020SO Unistellar

    There are strong suspicions that this asteroid is not, in fact, a relic of the formation of our solar system, but instead a human-made object. Soon after its discovery, astronomers pointed out its orbit, which is very similar to Earth’s. Additionally, they noticed that this is an unusually slow asteroid, ten times slower than most asteroids. Finally, they think they have measured a small deflection on its orbit, which could be due to an interaction with the solar wind, as if the object was bright and hollow.

    This asteroid may be, in fact, a Centaur upper rocket booster that launched NASA’s Surveyor 2 lander to the moon in 1966. Now, 50 years later, has the rocket part returned to us as simulated in the peculiar orbit shown below?


    OrbitSimulatorTrimmed

    The only way to be 100 percent certain is to image 2020 SO1 directly; that’s only possible through telescopes equipped with adaptive optics when it is very close to us. Alternatively, we can continue to observe it and confirm this interesting but unnatural deflection.

    Yesterday, a team of astronomers led by Vishnu Reddy from the University of Arizona announced that they managed to observe this object with the NASA IRTF telescope located in Hawaii on the top of Mauna Kea.

    NASA Infrared Telescope facility Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA, 4,207 m (13,802 ft) above sea level.

    The spectrum, which is the decomposition of the asteroid’s light in a wide range of color, seems to be similar to a Centaur D rocket booster launched in 1971 and currently in geostationary orbit.

    This exciting result needs to be confirmed, but it implies that 2020SO1 is human-made if it is true. We thought we had found a new moon for Earth, but this may be debris we left in the solar system. Definitely less appealing or romantic.

    If you missed it, don’t worry – it will be back in February 2021. We may be able to observe it then, even with a small telescope.

    In the meantime, look up and enjoy the universe, which is always full of mysteries.

    3
    A Centaur upper stage is pictured being lifted onto the first stage booster of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Credit: NASA/Roy Allison.

    See the full article here .

    five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

    Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

    Stem Education Coalition

    SETI Institute


    About the SETI Institute
    What is life? How does it begin? Are we alone? These are some of the questions we ask in our quest to learn about and share the wonders of the universe. At the SETI Institute we have a passion for discovery and for passing knowledge along as scientific ambassadors.

    The SETI Institute is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit scientific research institute headquartered in Mountain View, California. We are a key research contractor to NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and we collaborate with industry partners throughout Silicon Valley and beyond.

    Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute employs more than 130 scientists, educators, and administrative staff. Work at the SETI Institute is anchored by three centers: the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe (research), the Center for Education and the Center for Outreach.

    The SETI Institute welcomes philanthropic support from individuals, private foundations, corporations and other groups to support our education and outreach initiatives, as well as unfunded scientific research and fieldwork.

    A Special Thank You to SETI Institute Partners and Collaborators
    • Campoalto, Chile, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Headquarters, National Science Foundation, Aerojet Rocketdyne,SRI International

    Frontier Development Lab Partners
    • Breakthrough Prize Foundation, European Space Agency, Google Cloud, IBM, Intel, KBRwyle. Kx Lockheed Martin, NASA Ames Research Center, Nvidia, SpaceResources Luxembourg, XPrize

    In-kind Service Providers
    • Gunderson Dettmer – General legal services, Hello Pilgrim – Website Design and Development Steptoe & Johnson – IP legal services, Danielle Futselaar

    SETI/Allen Telescope Array situated at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, 290 miles (470 km) northeast of San Francisco, California, USA, Altitude 986 m (3,235 ft)

    SETI Institute – 189 Bernardo Ave., Suite 100
    Mountain View, CA 94043
    Phone 650.961.6633 – Fax 650-961-7099
    Privacy Policy – Questions and Comments

    Also in the hunt, but not a part of the SETI Institute

    SETI@home, a BOINC [Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing] project originated in the Space Science Lab at UC Berkeley.


    BOINCLarge

    BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, developed at UC Berkeley.

     

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