Happy 50th Birthday SETI

SETI's Allen Telescope Array via SETI Institute

Fifty years ago today, on April 8th, 1960, a Cornell astronomy professor named Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at the star Tau Ceti in the hope of hearing broadcasts from extraterrestrial intelligence. Naturally, he didn't hear anything out of the ordinary. But with this experiment, Drake began the decades-long search for aliens, known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), that celebrates its 50th anniversary today. Over the last half century, SETI has failed at its initial goal of contacting aliens, but succeeded mightily in bringing new attention to astronomy, helping to develop cloud computing, and inspiring generations of new scientists.

In the 1960s, SETI drew considerable interest from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the famous astronomer Carl Sagan, but 1977 marked the high point for SETI. In that year, Drake and Sagan successfully lobbied NASA to equip the the Voyager Probe with a golden disc inscribed with information about Earth on one side, and recordings of pop, classical, and traditional music on the other. Ideally, when Voyager left our solar system, it would be found by aliens who would decode the disc, learning about our planet's life. It remains the only physical SETI message every sent out into deep space.

Also in 1977, the SETI-operated Big Ear radio telescope received the historic "Wow!" signal, a 72-second-long burst of powerful radio waves. At the time, the scientists interpreted the Wow signal as the only burst ever detected that might have actually originated in an extraterrestrial civilization. Subsequent searches failed to find a repeat of the signal, and in the years since scientists have produced a number of more likely explanations for the signal's source. However, the Wow signal is still the closest SETI ever got to receiving a message from ET.

While SETI obviously failed at finding actual alien intelligence, it continues to inspire to this day. SETI At Home, a screen saver that helped scientists parse through huge amounts of data, set the stage for programs used today by Berkley's biology lab and the Large Hadron Collider. And closer to SETI's original mission, the development of telescope technology advanced enough to detect exoplanets has revitalized the search for ET's in recent years by locating Earth-like planets circling distant stars.

So happy 50th, SETI! Here's to another 50 years as productive as the last, and maybe even finding some little green men in your next half century of groundbreaking research.

How To Respond When E.T. Says Hello

In 1977 NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft launched into space carrying phonographs called the Golden Records containing pictures and sounds meant to show extraterrestrials a glimpse of life on Earth. Credit: NASA.

If mankind ever does receive a signal from extraterrestrials, one of our first decisions may be what to write back. As director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute, psychologist Douglas Vakoch has thought a lot about this question.

"The challenge of constructing any interstellar message is trying to anticipate what you and your recipient have in common," Vakoch said. "One thing we can guarantee is they won't be native speakers of English or Swahili or Chinese."

And the same problem applies to any incoming message to Earth.

"It's very reasonable to think that we will know there's an extraterrestrial out there, that we will have a message that is distinctly artificial, but that we won't be able to decipher it," Vakoch said.

So choosing a language and means to communicate is just as difficult as figuring out what you want to say. A language based on mathematics and scientific principles is a good idea, Vakoch said, because presumably if aliens are advanced enough to send or receive a signal across the abyss of space, then they'll have some scientific understanding.

Humankind already has some experience sending messages crafted for alien eyes. One of the most famous of these is the collection of sounds and images contained on the Voyager Golden Records, two phonograph records that were packed aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft before they were launched in 1977 on trajectories that have recently taken them beyond the solar system.

"I think the richest description of ourselves that has been sent into space is the Voyager interstellar records," Vakoch said. "They include greetings in 55 languages, over a hundred pictures describing life on Earth."

The contents of the records were chosen by a committee chaired by the late Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan. They contained recordings of natural sounds such as thunder and bird calls, as well as music from cultures around the world. But Vakoch said these messages were largely symbolic, because most scientists admit the chances of another species intercepting these spacecraft are very slim since they have barely travelled beyond the outskirts of the solar system so far in the 33 years they've been in space. However, even if our postcards to aliens are never received, the act of crafting them may be a worthwhile exercise.

"Let's step aside from our daily concerns for a moment, and let's think about what we would want to say if our words are going to last a thousand years," Vakoch said.

An interesting aspect of the records, he pointed out, is that they emphasize the positive aspects of life on Earth, while ignoring bleaker realities such as war and environmental degradation.

"It really highlights our natural tendency in making contact in putting our best foot forward," he said. "It's the natural way to meet strangers. You don't typically tell them about all your problems on a first date." Though this is an understandable inclination, he said that advanced extraterrestrials may find it very intriguing to hear about the problems that humans face on a day-to-day basis.

"We have a lot of problems as a species that we're struggling with," Vakoch said. "We're not sure if we're even going to survive as a species on our planet. I think a more informative message would be actually to talk about some of the challenges we face because I think that's one of the defining characteristics of our civilization."

In a recent project called "Earth Speaks," the SETI Institute solicited public suggestions about what to say in a communication to aliens.

"One of the most common messages coming in to Earth Speaks is the simple 'Help,'" Vakoch said.

Or perhaps people shouldn't bother composing a message at all. Another SETI scientist, astronomer Seth Shostak, has proposed that we just broadcast everything on the Google servers out to aliens.

"Instead of trying to think of what's fundamental, just send them a lot of data and let them sort through and find the pattern," Vakoch said.

Vakoch discussed some of the issues around interstellar message composition in a recent paper in the journal Acta Astronautica.

Dan Werthimer Presents SETI@home

Partner:

Maker Faire

Location:

San Mateo County Event Center
San Mateo, CA

Event Date:

05.30.09

Speakers:

Dan Werthimer

Summary

Are We Alone? Chief SETI@home scientist Dan Werthimer discusses the possibility of life in the universe, and how to set-up your computer to possibly detect the first signal from a civilization beyond Earth.

Following on President Obama's call to "begin again the work of remaking America," Maker Faire 2009 was organized around the theme of Re-Make America. Held in the San Francisco Bay Area, Maker Faire celebrates what President Obama called "the risk takers, the doers, and the makers of things."

SETI@home Celebrates 10 Years of Searching for E.T.

SETI@home, the world's largest and longest-running volunteer computing project, celebrates its tenth anniversary this month with 140,000 participants and 235,000 computers powering the search for intelligent signals from space.

No extraterrestrials have been found yet. But the project has continued to inspire and excite the public, and has spurred the development of dozens of similar volunteer computing projects.

Launched May 17, 1999, SETI@home uses home computers to sift through radio data acquired from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. It is searching for a needle in an enormous haystack: A unique signal displaying the telltale signs of an intelligent source, hidden in the unrelenting electromagnetic noise coming from space. The project quickly attracted a worldwide following: Three months after its debut, 1 million people had signed up in 223 countries, running the screensaver software on home and work computers and in grade school classrooms, universities and even government offices.

The Planetary Society was there from the very beginning. Back in 1997, when the project founders were searching frantically for sponsors to turn their concept into reality, the Society stepped forward with a founding grant that made it all possible. In the years that followed the Society worked closely with SETI@home, supporting its expansion and helping spread the word about the project to the public at large.

Over the past decade, more than 5 million people have signed up, and today, despite more than 80 competing volunteer computing projects, SETI@home still has the largest core of dedicated users. "The number of members has ebbed and flowed," said project director David Anderson, "but we have more computing power than ever, thanks to the steadily increasing power of computer processors."

The challenge, according to chief scientist Dan Werthimer, is scanning all frequencies, all areas of the sky, and all possible signal patterns for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. During its 10 years of operation, SETI@home has steadily improved the capture of radio signals from the Arecibo radio telescope and subsequent signal analyses. Today, more frequencies are covered and more points in the sky are scanned simultaneously.
SETI@home was conceived in 1995 when David Gedye, a software engineer now at Microsoft Live Labs, first thought about harnessing the immense, unused computing power of desktop computers around the world. He approached University of Washington astronomer Woody Sullivan, who suggested contacting Werthimer, whose SERENDIP project was already doing SETI at Arecibo. Gedye also called on the expertise of Anderson, a specialist in distributed computing. Together, the four developed a way to link desktop computers through the Internet into a virtual supercomputer able to perform complex signal analysis of Arecibo data.

Since the 1999 launch, a group led by Anderson has developed software called BOINC that lets scientists anywhere create projects like SETI@home and allows volunteers to mix and match these projects on their PCs. SETI@home moved to BOINC in 2005; other projects are using BOINC to study disease-related proteins (Rosetta@home), search for gravitational waves (Einstein@home), and predict the Earth's future climate (ClimatePrediction.net).

As for the radio data that feeds SETI@home started collecting data two years ago from a new multibeam receiver at Arecibo that now brings in 14 times more data than the previous receiver with much greater sensitivity, all of it now feeding the number-crunching SETI@home computers.

SETI@home was and remains a shoestring operation. It got off the ground with just $100,000 in funding from The Planetary Society and Paramount Pictures, and although companies like Sun Microsystems and Intel supply it with server computers, it is now funded exclusively by donations from volunteers, Werthimer said. But he and Anderson intend to keep it running as long as there is interest.

"We're in this for the long haul," said Werthimer.