by To see a possible intelligent life out there, you first have to spend a whole lot using a range of techniques and technologies.
Any “fishing trip” for ET includes close studies of life in extreme environments right here Worldto help us identify any signatures we may come across Mars or a deep dive through the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon, Europe. The search can also combine the use of space-based telescopes for inspection Planets like Earth surrounding their house stars. Then there’s the proverbial eavesdropping in the cosmos using radio telescopes to pick up any bustling interstellar civilization or perhaps looking for distant communications with lasers from extraterrestrial bodies.
These and other efforts are being actively pursued at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, right there in the high-tech heartbeat of Silicon Valley. Over a hundred institutional scientists are busily engaged in research i astronomy and astrophysics, astrobiologyas well as exoplanets, climate and biogeology and the Search for External Information (SETI).
Related: SETI scientists begin a massive new hunt for Intelligent aliens
Space.com caught up with Bill Diamond, President and CEO of the SETI Institute for an exclusive, intimate, mind-bending discussion about the emerging evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Spoiler alert! It’s not so old, true and tired “are we alone?” Rather, it’s more like “just how crowded is it?”
Early stages
There is a lot going on today in terms of searching for and trying to understand possible extraterrestrial life. the universeDiamond said.
“For much of the first decades of SETI, very little effort was done, looking at relatively ‘insensitive’ instruments in relatively narrow parts of the radio spectrum in random parts of the sky. It could hardly be considered comprehensive effort,” Diamond said.
But even today, in many ways, SETI’s work is still in its infancy. However, more and more is happening with the increase in the number of instruments and technologies in the world. “There is an extensive and expanded effort now underway,” Diamond said.
COSMIC collaboration
For example, there is the Integrated Open Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence – mercifully abbreviated to SETI COSMIC.
All 27 antennas that make up the Very large array (VLA) in New Mexico with new equipment to make SETI observations 24/7 under a collaboration between the SETI Institute and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the group that operates the VLA.
Yes, that’s the same VLA featured in the 1997 sci-fi film “Contact,” complete with actress Jodie Foster decked out in a tight stereo headset. Actually, the VLA wasn’t used for SETI, Diamond noted, but now it is.
Detectable signatures
“COSMIC is really the most comprehensive SETI search on a single instrument in history. That’s very exciting,” Diamond said, and it gives the COSMIC effort access to a fully independent copy of the data streams from the entire VLA.
COSMIC will analyze data for the possible presence of “technological signatures” – detectable signatures and signals that herald the presence of distant advanced civilizations.
In scientific circles, signatures are seen as a subset of the much more established search for “biosignatures” — evidence of microbial loitering or other primitive life on some of the billions of people. exoplanet we know now there.
Newly enlarged
“For classic radio SETI, there is more going on in the world now than ever before,” Diamond said. That uptick also includes the SETI Institute’s newly enlarged Allen Telescope located northeast of San Francisco. It was named after Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, in recognition of his generous financial support for the facility in its early stages.
The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) has had a redesigned antenna and is now equipped with advanced computers, signal processors, and other electronics, making it much faster than ever, Diamond says. “The instrument is performing at a level it has never performed since it was built. That’s all relatively new in two or three years.”
One output of ATA is how SETI Institute scientists use it to explore powerful Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly difficult to explain.
A philanthropic gift
Franklin Antonio, co-founder of Qualcomm, a communications chip company, was a passionate driver of the ATA overhaul. Antonio’s posthumous $200 million philanthropic gift to the SETI Institute continues as the institute’s technical advisor.
That commitment is prompting an action plan that will improve the institution’s multidisciplinary, multicenter research, education and outreach makeup, Diamond said.
Also on the agenda of the institute is to take in and evaluate ideas from SETI researchers anywhere in the world to benefit from a pool of money for things like technology, software, or to run an experiment.
“If we like what you’re doing, we’ll fund it,” Diamond said. “We’re going to kind of replace NASA for the time being as the only place in the world where you can submit a proposal to do SETI work.”
Those three words
Roll back time to Columbus Day in 1992 when NASA began a formal, more intensive SETI program. But less than a year later, Congress short-circuited the program.
Is it time for the government to rethink the search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
“Yes, absolutely,” Diamond replied. NASA has three scientific questions, he said: How does the Universe work? How did we get here? Are we alone?
Almost every time NASA leadership speaks publicly, Diamond said, they invoke those three words – Are we alone?
“We all want to know. NASA clearly wants to know because it is one of their scientific priorities,” said Diamond. “So isn’t it time for them to get back in the business of trying to answer that question?”
There are planets everywhere
NASA’s own Kepler space telescope was the space agency’s first planet-hunting mission. During nine years of earth space scope, Diamond emphasized, showed that there are billions of exoplanets in our galaxy. “He told us that there are planets everywhere and that many of them are habitable.”
NASA beginning SETI work, Diamond noted. NASA has funded a SETI Institute scientist using observations from the space agency’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TSES). The intention is to extract possible techno-signatures from TESS data with the help of artificial intelligence/machine learning tools.
“So yes, I think the winds of change are blowing a bit in favor of the government getting back into this business. And, in my opinion, I think they should step up and do it,” said Diamond.
Neighborhood watch
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With all the SETI research going on, how prepared are we for the revelation of a secured neighborhood watch, a doorbell?
“The direct answer to that question is no, we are not necessarily ready, although it depends on what the answer is,” replied Diamond. It is only a matter of time before this question is answered, he said, on one level or another.
We should start thinking about how we communicate this information, the impacts we might have on society, on religion, on politics, on technology, on governments, said Diamond.
“I think all these technologies, modalities and instruments are looking at different ways,” said Diamond, “it’s definitely getting closer and closer.”
