[meteorite-list] SETI conducts coordinated search for ET

[JoshuaTreeMuseum]

But outer Space,
At least this far,
For all the fuss
Of the populace
Stays more popular
Than populousRobert Frost-----------------------



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/06/AR2010110604127.html

Observatories on 5 continents to scan skies for extraterrestrial life

Gallery

A global search for extraterrestrial intelligence
It's the 50th anniversary of Project Ozma, a pioneering search for 
extraterrestrial Intelligence experiment to search for signs of life in 
distant solar systems through interstellar radio waves.
» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

     Network News
      X Profile
      View More Activity
      TOOLBOX
       Resize
      Print
      E-mail
      Yahoo! Buzz
      Reprints

      COMMENT
      47 Comments  |  View All »
      POST A COMMENT
      You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
       Why Do I Have to Log In Again?
      Log In Again?
       CLOSE
      We've made some updates to washingtonpost.com's Groups, MyPost and 
comment pages. We need you to verify your MyPost ID by logging in before you 
can post to the new pages. We apologize for the inconvenience.




       Discussion PolicyYour browser's settings may be preventing you from 
commenting on and viewing comments about this item. See instructions for 
fixing the problem.
      Discussion Policy
       CLOSE
      Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other 
inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. 
Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone 
other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to 
block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or 
privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review 
the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully 
responsible for the content that you post.

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 6, 2010; 8:20 PM

The scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence went global this 
weekend as observatories in 13 nations on five continents trained their 
telescopes on several promising star systems.

This Story
  a.. Observatories on 5 continents to scan skies for extraterrestrial life
  b.. What message would you send to extraterrestrials?
  c.. A global search for extraterrestrial intelligence
While they don't expect their one-day joint effort will find the kind of 
intentionally produced signal from afar that enthusiasts have been seeking 
for decades, participants say the undertaking illustrates just how far the 
search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, has come.

Frank Drake made the world's first such observations at the Green Bank radio 
telescope in West Virginia 50 years ago, listening on a single-channel 
receiver that took in radio waves one frequency at a time. Today's 
technology allows scientists to receive radio signals at millions of 
different frequencies per minute, in addition to searching for laser-like 
bursts of light communication using optical telescopes.

The international star-viewing extravaganza, the first of its kind, comes at 
a time of fast-paced discovery in the science of exoplanets, bodies that 
orbit suns beyond our solar system.

Last month alone brought the announcement of the first Earth-sized planet 
found that appeared to be potentially habitable, as well as a study from top 
scientists in the field which concluded that the number of Earth-sized 
planets in the Milky Way alone could be counted in the tens of billions.

Suddenly, the prospects for finding planets that might have complex life and 
environments to support it appear to have brightened. Scientists well in the 
future may still conclude Earth is the only planet that harbors life, but 
discoveries in the last few years seem to increase the odds that we are not 
alone after all.

"This is a real coming of age for exoplanets and for SETI," said Drake, who 
remains active in the field and whose founding of the science of SETI five 
decades ago was being commemorated as well over the weekend.

"It shows SETI has gone truly international, and it's happening when our 
knowledge about planets beyond Earth is just exploding," he said. "We made 
predictions based on weak evidence 50 years ago and now a lot of that is, 
very satisfyingly, getting hard scientific support."

Practical matter



Doug Vakoch, a SETI Institute scientist who helped organize the effort, said 
the coordinated observing is probably most important for its practical side.

"What this weekend really does is begin the process of making it possible to 
track a possible SETI signal around the globe," he said. "If a signal is 
detected, it has to be confirmed and followed, and now we're setting up a 
network to do that."

The participating observatories are in Italy, India, Argentina, Australia, 
France, Germany, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Sweden, the Netherlands, 
and several in the United States and Japan. Officials at the largest radio 
telescope in the world, Arecibo, will also participate.

The idea for the unprecedented global observation was initiated by Shin-ya 
Narusawa, director of Nishi-Harima Astronomical Observatory in western 
Japan - one of the largest observatories in that country. Narusawa organized 
a many-centered SETI observation in Japan last fall, and was invited to 
present his results at the biannual NASA-sponsored astrobiology conference 
held this spring.

There, Narusawa met SETI Institute President Jill Tarter, he proposed a 
bilateral and then international observation, and before long 19 
observatories and research centers in 13 nations had joined in.

This Story
  a.. Observatories on 5 continents to scan skies for extraterrestrial life
  b.. What message would you send to extraterrestrials?
  c.. A global search for extraterrestrial intelligence
The telescopes will be trained in a coordinated way on a number of star 
systems, including Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani - the nearest systems in the 
Northern Hemisphere and the two that Drake observed 50 years ago in what he 
called Project Ozma, a reference to the princess in "The Wizard of Oz.'' 
(Keeping with the theme, the weekend's effort is called Project Dorothy for 
the heroine of the book.)

"These two stars were the best SETI targets a half-century ago," Narusawa 
said. "They remain the symbol of the project Ozma and so are two of the 
target stars for Project Dorothy."

But with more than 500 exoplanets identified in the past 15 years and 700 
more awaiting confirmation, he said, the observation can be far more 
directed and ambitious. Some will include stellar systems that have planets 
which appear to be located the right distance from their suns to support 
life, he said.

'Earth is tiny'


While Narusawa is a scientist, he said he had another, non-scientific reason 
for organizing the global event. "When we do this worldwide observation," he 
said in an e-mail from Japan, "citizens remember the Earth is tiny and we 
are the same earthlings."

The SETI enterprise has, from the start, had many skeptics - scientists who 
say it involves looking for a needle in a haystack, and at times legislators 
who have been outraged that for a short time the effort received federal 
funding. That came to a quick end in 1993 and SETI has relied on private 
funding since, although the institute was allowed to compete again for 
federal grants late in the Bush administration.

Its biggest coup has been to win almost $30 million from Microsoft 
co-founder Paul Allen to build a large array of radio telescopes in the 
mountains of northern California. The Hat Creek array and its 42 radio 
telescopes are jointly run by the SETI Institute and the University of 
California at Berkeley, and are used for SETI observing and more traditional 
radio astronomy. The facility was one of the 19 to participate in Project 
Dorothy.

With new scientific discoveries announced regularly that support key 
assumptions that Drake and SETI made decades ago, and now with a global 
network of astronomers who agree that SETI constitutes solid and important 
science, Drake said he has never been more optimistic about ultimately 
finding intelligent life beyond Earth. Although 50 years of SETI observing 
has yet to come up with a signal, he said, the percentage of stars actually 
studied is minuscule.


He also said it's time for people to consider an initially unsettling 
understanding that flows from the work being done by exoplanet hunters and 
by SETI - that distant planets are as much a part of nature as Earth is.

"Who knows what kind of life we'll ultimately find out there?" Drake said. 
"It won't be like our life because it will have evolved in response to 
different kinds of forces. But there's no doubt about it - the underlying 
chemistry will be the same and that means it will be basically an extension 
of what we have here".



-----------------------------

Phil Whitmer