Stepping Stones to Our Extraterrestrial Neighbors

Astrophysics is still a very young science. Most of the theories we have about exoplanets and the potential for life on these objects is constantly changing.

For example, Europa was discovered in 1610 by Galileo. Until the 1970s, life, at least as the concept is generally understood, was believed to be entirely dependent on energy from the Sun (Europa (moon), 2013). In 2006, Robert T. Pappalardo, an assistant professor in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder said, “We’ve spent quite a bit of time and effort trying to understand if Mars was once a habitable environment. Europa today, probably, is a habitable environment. We need to confirm this … but Europa, potentially, has all the ingredients for life … and not just four billion years ago … but today. (Leonard, 2006)”

Recently, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found compelling evidence of a planet forming 7.5 billion miles away from its star, a finding that may challenge current theories about planet formation (Space News: NASA'S Hubble uncovers evidence of farthest planet forming from its star, 2013). The planet is estimated to be relatively small, at 6 to 28 times more massive than Earth. Its wide orbit means it is moving slowly around its host star. If the suspected planet were orbiting in our solar system, it would be roughly twice Pluto's distance from the sun.

So, what does this mean for us as we scour the cosmos, seeking communication with intellegent life on other worlds? It means that we have to potentially widen our original search area.

Our search has been for planets in the “Goldilocks Zone (The Goldilocks Zone, 2003).” In a nutshell, this means that the planet has to be like earth in its distance from the Sun. Too close, it is too hot, like Venus. Too far, it is too cold, like Mars. Just right, like Earth, life develops.

Seeking contact with life existing away from Earth is just a stepping stone. Once life is found, we will learn so much that we can’t even estimate the discoveries. We might find clues to the origins of the Universe itself. We may find that the Goldilocks Zone was a faulty theory. That life does not need to evolve on Earth-like planets. Life may exist on moons like Europa.

Admittedly, Europa probably only has microbial life and that we will not be looking for communications streaming out from that moon. However, why does intelligent life have to exist like mankind? Can so called “lower” life forms also develop high levels of intelligence.

We don’t know much about the potential for even life on other planets and moons. We are currently only theorizing based upon our brief studies of the planets in our own star system. Studies that are less than 40 years old in a universe that is billions of years older.

Finding life outside of Earth is more than just communications. It is exploration and discovery. Those people who think it is just ancient astronaut theories driving us to seek life in the Universe don’t understand that we are not looking for ETs that might have visited Earth in the past or who crashed in Roswell. No, the search for life is about finding out that we are not alone, we are not unique. It is about taking another step in our journey to learn more about the Universe and consequently, learn more about ourselves.

Works Cited

The Goldilocks Zone. (2003, October 2). Retrieved June 16, 2013, from NASA Science: Science News: http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/02oct_goldilocks/

Europa (moon). (2013, June 3). Retrieved June 16, 2013, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Exploration
Space News: NASA'S Hubble uncovers evidence of farthest planet forming from its star. (2013, June 16).

Retrieved June 16, 2013, from Lake County News: http://www.lakeconews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31695:space-news-nasas-hubble-uncovers-evidence-of-farthest-planet-forming-from-its-star&catid=1:latest&Itemid=197

Leonard, D. (2006, February 7). Europa Mission: Lost In NASA Budget. Retrieved June 16, 2013, from Space.com: http://www.space.com/2022-europa-mission-lost-nasa-budget.html

ET Interest from Around the World

When ET phones Earth, will s/he speak to an American? The United States is not the only country in the world with an active search for extraterrestrial (ET) intelligence. The search for extra-solar planets is not a local passion. An exo-solar planet is a planets not in our solar system.

Chinese astronomers installed the first of three Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3-1) at Dome Argus, located at the highest elevation on the Antarctic continent, at the beginning of 2012. One of its primary missions is to search for extra-solar planets suitable for life.

Dome A may be the best place on Earth to gaze at the Universe, says Wang. At 4,093 meters above sea level, Dome A has an extremely thin and stable atmosphere, and the pressure is only half that at sea level. The extreme cold — temperatures can drop to –80 °C — makes the air very dry and reduces background radiation when observing in the infrared. There is almost no air pollution and the long winter nights allow for four months of uninterrupted observation.

According to Lifan Wang, an astronomer at Texas A&M University in College Station, and director of the Chinese Centre for Antarctic Astronomy in Nanjing: “Antarctica has the best conditions on Earth for astronomical observation, as it has very flat ground, a transparent atmosphere and little turbulence. The ground-based telescopes here will bring us precious information from the universe.” “We will send people there to retrieve observation data. I hope we can find some likely candidates. It's hard to say precisely how many, but I hope there are no less than 10,” Wang said. “So far, humans have yet to find an exact twin of the Earth. (Chinese Astronomers Search for Alien Life, 2013)”

The Huffington Post reported that one group of UFO believers have packed their bags, tents, photo and video cameras and are on a cross-country trek in Russia, hoping to capture photographic evidence of possible alien activity. Dubbed the “Trans-Eurasian UFO-Search Expedition,” the 50 participants have been watching the skies above the southern tip of Lake Baikal, the world's oldest and deepest fresh water lake, located in southern Siberia (UFO Hunters Search For Aliens In 2-Month Expedition Across Russia, 2012).

Reuters has reported that in the next decade we will see two record-breaking telescopes come on line; the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a huge radio telescope sited in South Africa and Australia, and Europe's Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) that will sit on a mountain top in Chile's Atacama desert and be the largest optical telescope ever built.

Their main task will be to probe the origins and nature of galaxies, but they will also look for signs of life on planets that can now only be seen in the roughest detail.

“I think the capabilities of new telescopes means that the detection of an ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) is more likely in the next few decades, than it was in the last,” said Mike Garrett, general director of Astron, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (Search for alien life about to step up a gear, 2012).

If we ever detect signs of intelligent alien life, the people likely to be on the receiving end of a cosmic signal are the scientists of SETI, aka Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This loose band of a couple of dozen researchers around the world doggedly listens to the cosmos in the hope of catching alien communications. It's often in the face of scant funding and even ridicule (Alien hunters: What if ET ever phones our home?, 2012).

They watch signals coming from the world's largest radio telescopes, looking for anything unusual, or even the flashes of laser “lighthouses” designed to catch our attention.
SETI started as one man using one telescope dish in 1959. Today computers are used to sift through the cosmic radio traffic, flagging up to astronomers any potential calls from extraterrestrial life (Welcome to the SETI Institute, 2013).
You could be the one who helps contact ET. You can join in on the search without leaving home. You don’t have to live in America or near any scientific institute. You can join SETI@Home and use your computer to join other computers sifting through the “noise” from outer space, looking for the signals from an intelligent lifeform (What is SETI@Home?, 2013).

Works Cited
Alien hunters: What if ET ever phones our home? (2012, January 15). Retrieved May 25, 2013, from BBC News: Science and Environment:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16273512

Search for alien life about to step up a gear. (2012, October 18). Retrieved May 25, 2013, from Reuters:http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/18/us-science-newplanet-aliens-idUSBRE89H16H20121018

UFO Hunters Search For Aliens In 2-Month Expedition Across Russia. (2012, August 7). Retrieved May 25, 2013, from Huffington Post Wierd News:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/07/russia-ufo-hunters-seek-aliens_n_1739854.html

Chinese Astronomers Search for Alien Life. (2013, May 23). Retrieved May 25, 2013, from The Daily Galaxy:http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/05/chinese-astronomers-search-for-twin-earth-.html

Welcome to the SETI Institute. (2013). Retrieved from SETI Institute: http://www.seti.org/

What is SETI@Home? (2013). Retrieved from SETI@Home:http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

Is there proof of ET in the Bible ???

Michael Masten believes he has just found proof of E.T. existence in the Bible.   He is so convinced, he his reaching out to anyone that will listen to his story.   His new discovery is based on a hidden sequence code in the Bible creates graphs of E.T. in the Genesis. He swears this is not a joke. Michael says this video shows demonstrates his proof.  youtu.be/GvpR77qRcW4

Communication with Extraterrestrial Civilizations

We are not alone in the universe. 

While some still consider this far-fetched, most scientists today take the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence for granted. The National Academy of Sciences has officially stated that contact with aliens on other planets “is no longer something beyond our dreams but a natural event in the history of mankind that will perhaps occur in the lifetime of many of us. (Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, 1966)”

Alpha Centauri B is only 4.3 light years away. Around it orbits the closest planet that could support life. It is believed to be too young to have evolved intelligent life. The search for viable planets has been localized to six stars within fifteen light years of the sun: tau Ceti, omicron-2 Eridani, epsilon Eridani, epsilon Indi, 70 Ophiuchi, and 61 Cygni. Dr. Su-Shu Huang of the University of California suggested epsilon Eridani and tau Ceti as the best prospects, and these two are getting the most attention now. Tau Ceti is 10.8 light years away and is the closest candidate.

Even at these relatively short distances on the astronomical scale, it would be over twenty years before an exchange of communication could take place. What kinds of messages would be sent to us and how would we respond? Considering the great time lags, any message we received would most likely be lengthy and in a logical sequence independent of verbal languages.

Once the sequence had been recorded we could sit back and attempt to decipher it. One of the first things noticed would undoubtedly be that the carrier wave itself was characterized by a Doppler shift due to the orbital motion of both the earth and the other planet. The initial items of the text would contain simple statements of universal scientific truths such as pulses arranged in the prime number series according to Drs. Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison of Cornell. Also, wave forms depicting the standard arithmetic operators would appear and π, with its universal significance, might be transmitted as the series. As the message progressed, the Pythagorean Theorem might appear, as well as more involved physical constants, such as the fine structure constant, 137.039, representing several fundamental atomic ratios among which are:

1. 1.    the ratio of the principal hydrogen wavelength (in the visible spectrum) to the circumference of the orbit of simple hydrogen’s only electron,
2. 2.    the velocity of light to the velocity of hydrogen’s electron, and
3. 3.    the number of uranium atoms necessary to sustain a chain reaction.

Scanning lines that could be put together in the form of a picture, like television, would emerge, and eventually clues to the nature of their language, life, and society would be revealed.

Our first response would be to send back a similar sequence with a few obvious alterations so that they would not think they were hearing an echo. We could add to their message and insert ideas of our own, like symbols for units of distance, time, and mass, for example.

As new problems are solved, the search for intelligent beings trillions of miles away quickens in pace. With each new success, though, comes a new question to be pondered. What if high exo-civilizations have had an ear turned our way for a hundred million years or so and have already decided there is no one here? What if advanced societies want no part of underdeveloped people who are just learning the fundamentals of radio? What about our own existence? Could we all have evolved from matter brought to the earth billions of years ago by a stray meteorite from a life- sustaining planet of that era? Melvin Calvin of the University of California has found nucleotide fragments in meteorite specimens. Nucleotides are substructures of desoxyribonucleic acid, better known as DNA!

There are wide areas of uncertainty, but the quest for scientific knowledge and the romantic appeal of maybe finding an equal or superior civilization in the far reaches of outer space make one want to forget that we might not find anything. Astronomer Drake himself wryly suggests, ‚We might get a better feeling for the situation if we could first answer the question: ‘Is there intelligent life on earth?’‛ The odds are uncertain, but the search continues.

Works Cited

Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. (1966). NSA Technical Journal , Vol. XI.

Should Earth Go Dark for its Own Safety????

Over the years there has been an on-going discussion about transmitting signals from earth because it may increase the chance of detection by some advanced civilization that will come and do us harm.   Below is a recent post on this topic by GEORGE DVORSKY.   Please read and post your comments.   Should we transmit?  Should earth go dark?   Why?

http://io9.com/are-we-screwing-ourselves-by-transmitting-radio-signals-493800730

Alien Autopsy!

Alien?  Human?

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/05/bizarre-6-inch-skeleton-shown-to.html?ref=hp&utm_content=buffer6d9a9&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

Overcoming the Obstacles of Communicating With Alien Life

We are all familiar with the SETI (Welcome to the SETI Institute) project. This endeavor attempts to contact intelligent life on other worlds. This is done through direct contact by sending out radio signals or through listening for signals from alien worlds.

The SETI project mostly consists of analyzing radio signals coming from outer space and discerning patterns in the signals, and then determining if those signals are being generated naturally by things like pulsars or if they are being generated artificially by intelligent life. If you would like to assist in this work, you can download software that will analyze a set of radio signals and return the results to SETI (SETI@Home).

If a candidate signal is discovered, it will most likely be through the pattern written into the signal. It is the job of SETI to find the patterns. Then CETI comes in. CETI stands for Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This branch of SETI is responsible for developing/deciphering communication with alien life, if and when it is found. A lot of what CETI hopes to use in dealing with alien communication involves mathematics, which is good because mathematics are a universal constant and it will be through universal physical norms that we will find a method of communication (Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence).

The biological and planetary differences between our races will make what we think of as communication impossible. Alien social norms will probably be incomprehensible to us. Our communications on earth are based upon emotion. What if the alien species does not use emotion for communication or even have what we would recognize as emotions.

Even if we were not light years apart, we would have difficulties. On earth, we can begin to communicate with each other by pointing at objects and vocalizing our words for the objects. What if the alien race communicates through touch or telepathy? Pointing gets us nowhere.

Given that alien races will not communicate the way we do and the chances of our first communication being next to each other being very remote, pictures and pointing will not work. Communication across the 4.7 light years that separate us from the closest candidate planet will not be though spoken words. It will be through symbols. That is where mathematics comes in.

Even an alien race will understand that two rocks coupled with two rocks equals four rocks, no matter how it conceptualizes what a rock is. We cannot assume that an alien race has any eyesight or can see using the same part of the light spectrum that we consider visible.

In conclusion, mathematics is the norms of the universe and it is through these norms, these constants that communication will begin. Science and math will link together to exchange messages. For more information on how alien communication and mathematics work together check out my Wikipedia citation (Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence).

Works Cited

(n.d.). Retrieved from SETI@Home: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. (n.d.).

Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_extraterrestrial_intelligence

Welcome to the SETI Institute. (n.d.). Retrieved from SETI Institute: http://www.seti.org/

Do you need to talk to someone? How about talking with an Alien?

The presence of life on other planets has been put forth by many noted scientists. As more and more planets are discovered, the probability of some of these planets sustaining some form of life increases. As the presence of potentially living planets increases, so does the likelihood of some number of these planets supporting intelligent life. To date, there has not been any life, intelligent or not, discovered on any planet other than Earth.

While the presence of intelligent life in the universe increases with each new discovery, the fact remains that the universe is vast and our own galaxy is enormous. The sheer distance between Earth and the nearest stars are measured in light years.

The closest planet yet outside of our solar system has been found by European astronomers orbiting Alpha Centauri B, one of the three stars that make up the Alpha Centauri system, which, at 4.3 light years away, is the nearest star system past our Sun.

“This result represents a major step towards the detection of a twin Earth in the immediate vicinity of the Sun,” said Xavier Dumusque, an astronomer at the Universidade do Porto, Portugal, and the lead author of a new paper on the discovery, in a statement on Wednesday. “We live in exciting times!” (Dumusque, 2012)

“Immediate vicinity” is relative though: It would take a spacecraft like NASA’s unmanned Voyager, which is currently on the edge of the solar system, about 40,000 Earth years to reach Alpha Centauri.

The SETI project attempts to contact intelligent life on other planets, such as the one orbiting Alpha Centauri B. This is a long and tedious process since space is filled with signals from pulsars and other objects, such as black holes. Additionally, there are different sources of light with different colors all around the galaxy.

It would take 4.3 years for the communications to make it to us and another 4.3 years for our response to be received. This is very slow communication. Clearly, though we speak about radio communication, we are not talking about listening to the radio in our cars. Radio signals may not be our best form of communication, though it is the form we normally consider when thinking about SETI.

According to Brian McConnell (McConnell, 2001) Optical SETI (OSETI) looks for two types of laser signals: a pulsed beacon, or a steady, continuous signal. The laser signals sent out by intelligent aliens could be turned on and off within extremely short periods of time (billionths of a second or less). These lasers can be focused into very tight beams. The beam would outshine an entire star, if only for an instant.

Another option is to use lasers using specific color signatures. Each color could be a different meaning, much like each note in an octave has a precise vibration that gives it meaning.

The use of laser signals can also add something that radio signals cannot. Laser signals are capable of encoding several messages within one laser pulse. This can be accomplished through the use of spectra encoding.

Just like the mariners before the invention of radio, we could communicate via semaphores.  They communicate through the use of flags combined with arm movements of the flags to communicate from ship to ship without being able to come within earshot. So too will we be able to communicate with alien life through lasers. Yes it will take 4.3 years to get the message from Earth to the other planet, but with lasers we can pack more into each message.

All we need is someone to talk to. That is a matter of time based upon the number of inhabitable planets in our galaxy.

Dumusque, X. (2012, October 16). ESO for the Public > News > Press Releases. Retrieved May 1, 2013, from ESO — Reaching New Heights in Astronomy: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1241/

McConnell, B. (2001). Beyond Contact, A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilizations. Sebastopol, CA, USA: O'Reilly Media.