Do we still care whether aliens exist or not? According to 5.2 million earthlings in over 200 countries around the planet, we do. This number represents the number of people who have participated in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, more famously known as the SETI@home project. Since its launch on May 17, 1999, the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, hosted over 5 million computers worldwide, all working independently to pick up any potential alien signals which may have been sent our way. SETI@home remains to this day the largest distributed computing project in history according to Guiness World Records, a grid whose forces combined can compute over 528 TeraFLOPS. Now, I ain’t no geologist, but that’s a lot of FLOPS.
For those who don’t remember, SETI@home sought out participants with home computers and internet connections to help them “listen” for aliens. When the government cancelled all its funding towards extra-terrestrial listening programs in 1993, the SETI team could not afford to build the supercomputer necessary to process and distinguish an extra-terrestrial signal amidst the infinite amount of data floating around out there, so they decided to get us, the people, involved. By simply downloading their software, which came in the form a screensaver, thousands of home computers could begin to analyze the data recorded by the Arecibo telescope, which kept a vigilant watch on the skies from Puerto Rico. The SETI@home technology would not interfere with people’s day to day computing, as it would only function while they were away from their computers. Kind of like what an email filtering system does on exchange hosting server. And while a combined two million years worth of recorded data all returned to Berkeley without so much as an alien hiccup, the system created to support the project known as BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), which harnesses the power of many volunteer’s computers to achieve a common result, proved to be a massive success.
The search for Spock continues…
In the continued search for extra-terrestrial life forms, scientists are engaging in what’s known as “Active SETI,” or “METI,” which stand for “Messaging to ETI.” What do you do when you’re sick and tired of waiting around for the phone to ring? You pick it up and you call them. The only problem with this scenario is when many people around the world have all been waiting for the same call, and suddenly one person decides “to hell with this!” That person happens to be Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics. After many years of waiting by the phone for E.T. to call, Zaitsev decided to put one of the most powerful radio transmitters on earth to good use and has sent several messages into space, hoping for someone to “pick up.” These “Cosmic Calls” were send to constellations Orion, Cancer, Cygnus, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Sagitta, and Ursa Major. The first messages were sent in 1999, and they still have at least another 50 years of travelling before they arrive at their destinations.
While everyone appreciates a man of action, “scientists feel that [Zaitsev] is not only acting out of turn, but also independently speaking for everyone on the entire planet. Moreover, they believe there are possible dangers we may unleash by announcing ourselves to the unknown darkness, and if anyone plans to transmit messages from Earth, they want the rest of the world to be involved.” (source) Zaitsev’s transmissions have pushed several SETI members into resignation, as his actions directly violate an internationally-agreed upon Protocol which basically states that before any messages are sent into outer space, the public should be notified, and the nations of the world should all have their say in what the message will contain. In 1974, for example, a binary signal was sent from the Arecibo telescope which contained information about human DNA, complete with pictures of us, our solar system, and the telescope itself. Unfortunately the “star cluster to which the signal was sent… will have moved out of range of the beam during the 25,000 years it will take the message to get there.” (source)
In our perpetual quest to answer the question “Is there anybody out there?” we continue to increase technology’s ability to watch, to listen, and for the more bold, to speak. The real question should be whether or not we’re prepared for an answer. Hollywood has presented both sides of the alien coin, offering extra-terrestrials who have either come to warm our hearts and help us out, or to painfully probe and destroy us. So as far as intergalactic communication is concerned, should we take a more democratic, passive, sit back and quietly listen approach, as the SETI@home project has always promoted? Or should we take the more aggressive Russian approach, of just knocking on other galaxies’ doors, hoping the hyper-intelligent, willing-to-teach-us-the-secrets-of-the-universe-type of aliens will open? Despite a complete and total lack of results, and assuming that aliens might in fact be evil creatures bent on sticking pointy metal objects inside our bodies, the former would seem to be the safest thing to do. In fact, SETI and the University of California have teamed up again to develop more, stronger ears. The “Allen Telescope Array” will consist of 350 20-foot diameter dishes, allowing researchers to gather more space data than ever before.
Here’s the problem with the passive SETI listening approach as opposed to the pro-active METI: If the rest of the universe is also only listening, then no one will ever hear anything.
one would think that, even if the SETI project were to find anything. would it make it into public ears ? or would it just be hidden from us and become classified government information
that’s a good point to ponder at
tenia hace años la paguina de SETI HOME Pero un dia se me borro la paguina y no consigo conectarme es posible que exista YA