The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence

Text Box: An extra-solar planet - Lynnette Cook for NASA Huygens craft landing/splashing down on Titan Cassini/Huygens craft orbiting Saturn

     

This is now one of the major areas of astronomical research.

First there is the SETI project, closely associated with Project Serendip, which organises the first and largest world-wide network of home computers. Any home computer user, connected to the “net” can download “work units” of radio signals collected from the Arecibo Radio Telescope. These are processed in a way which attempts to detect interesting signals. On completion, the results package is sent back to the projects computer centre for analysis. A few hundred quite interesting “Gaussians” have now been detected and are the subject of further study! See http://setiathome.berkeley.edu for further information and how to join the project. This is now entirely funded by volunteers!

 

The main scientific research in this area is carried out by means of:

 

  1. Optical and Radio Astronomy, which have, up to March 13th, 2004, detected 120 stars, which have at least one planet in orbit! Most of the other work has at least some relevance to the topic. It should be noted that optical telescopes are being used in pairs as interferometers as at the Keck telescope complex.

By employing “adaptive optics” developed from the “Star Wars” project, ground based optical telescopes can now exceed the resolving power of the Hubble Space Telescope.

 

  1. The Hubble Space Telescope and the other proposed space telescopes, some of which will be entirely dedicated to the search for extra-solar planets if funding becomes available.
  2. The study of “Exobiology” which at the moment has to be Earth based and rather theoretical, until we finally discover the first evidence of even microbial life on another planet. However, NASA has a large department working in this area! Clearly they expect to find extra-terrestrial life eventually. (Great care is being taken to avoid contamination of other worlds by our space-craft and also to quarantine any samples being returned to Earth.). Of course, we are still finding examples of terrestrial organisms called “extremophiles”, in the world’s most inhospitable environments. Recently micro-organisms have been detected hundreds of metres below ground and on the fringes of the atmosphere. Bacteria on one of the Moon Mission cameras were returned to earth alive, after several years exposed to total vacuum and radiation on the lunar surface. These discoveries give rise to hope that we may yet find living organisms on other worlds. Also there is now the possibility that viruses and bacteria may be transferred across the Universe sheltered by meteorites and comets.

 

4.  The Space Missions, which are numerous and increasingly successful! Apart from the daily   stream of exciting images and discoveries from the current Mars Rovers and Mars Orbital Satellites, we have ongoing missions such as “Stardust”, which has collected and analysed space dust and rendezvoused with a comet, discovering that space dust is mainly organic. This craft will hopefully, return dust samples back to Earth. The amazingly advanced “Cassini-Huygens” craft, arriving in Saturn orbit on July 1st 2004, with the intention of a landing by the Huygens craft on the surface of the moon, Titan. We have just had the delayed but entirely successful launch of the European “Rosetta” craft, which will rendezvous with a comet and attempt a landing. It takes a lot of time just to keep up with these projects and there are still more in progress and in the planning or preparation stages. Use some of the links below to follow progress.

 

 

 

 

 

Quotations:

“If you are interested in life in the Universe, this is the time to be alive.” -  Lynn Harper, Astrobiology Scientist, NASA, September 1999.

“No longer is the search for other life in the universe a fringe discipline. It stands centre stage in the world’s scientific research effort. Its time has truly come.” – Dr Stuart Clark, Director of Public Astronomy Education, University of Hertfordshire.

“There are countless constellations, suns and planets: we see only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around their suns, no worse and no less than this globe of ours.” Not bad going for an Italian monk, Giordiano Bruno in 1584! He was unfortunately burnt at the stake in 1600 for these heretical views.

“Even if intelligence were widespread, we may never become aware of more than a small and atypical fraction of what is out there. Some brains may package reality in a fashion we can’t conceive. Others could be uncommunicative: living contemplative lives, perhaps deep under some planetary ocean, doing nothing to reveal their presence. There may be a lot more life out there than we could ever detect. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The only type of intelligence we could detect would be one that led to a technology we could recognise.” – Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, 2001

 

 

 

Definitions:

ALH84001              The famous “Martian” meteorite, discovered in the Allen Hills, Antarctica, in 1984. Possible evidence of fossilised microbes still hotly disputed!

Amino Acids  The building blocks of proteins. 170 known examples, but only 20 of these commonly occurring in proteins.

Black Smoker A hydrothermal vent on the ocean floor. The precipitation of chemicals round the vent produces clouds of black “smoke”.

Book of Life project  NASA’s attempt to train a “neural network” computer to recognise artificial life forms.

Exobiology  The study of life outside the Earth.

Extremophiles  Organisms capable of surviving in extreme conditions.

Fermi Paradox The idea that we should already have received visits by extraterrestrials, if indeed they exist.

Guassian   Any interesting signal received which produces the characteristic “bell-shaped” curve, as the radio telescope points closer and closer to the source of the signal and then move “off beam” as the earth turns.

High Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS) The NASA SETI survey cancelled by congress, which now continues as “Project Phoenix”.

Miller-Urey experiments  Designed to simulate the conditions existing shortly after the creation of the earth, to see whether complex organic molecules can be synthesised.

Murchison meteorite  Found to contain a variety of amino acids, showing their possible synthesis in space before planets were formed.

Nanobes   Recently discovered group of organisms whose size is measured in hundreds of nanometers.

Neural network  A computer programmed to operate in a way which mimics the human brain.

Nulling interferometer A system of combining the signals received by two or more telescopes in order to reduce the glare of a star.

Panspermia The theory of life being universal in space and transported by comets and meteorites and even in dust.

Project Ozma  The first SETI ever. Undertaken by Frank Drake in 1959.

Terrestrial Planet Finder A NASA design for a flotilla of space telescopes, which could image extra-solar planets.

Web sites worth visiting:                     

http://extrasolar.spaceart.org/extrasol.html                       http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/

 

 http://www.wolframscience.com/                         http://www.jb.amn.ac.uk/research/seti                                        

http://www.astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov                                http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov              

 

 http://web.ukonline.co.uk/phqfh/nasa.htm                       http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/exploring/

 

 http://nova.stanford.edu/projects/mgs/dmwr.html  http://www.astrsp-mrs.fr/projets/corot/ 

 

  http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/TPF/tpf_index.html           http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/life/beginnings   

 

 http://www.panspermia.org                                             http://www.planetary.org/

 

http://www.cleethorpesastronomy.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography:

 

Life on other worlds and how to find it by Stuart Clark. Published in 2000 by Springer-Praxis books  £16.95 ISBN 1-85233-097-X

Our Cosmic Habitat by Martin Rees - Phoenix Books £7.99  ISBN 0-75381-404-8

What does a Martian look like (The Science of extraterrestrial life) by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart - Ebury Press £6.99  ISBN 0-091-88616-3

Other Worlds by P.Davis - Penguin, Harmondsworth 1990

The last three minutes by Paul Davies – The Orion Publishing Group   ISBN  0-297-81502-4

Nano – the true story of nanotechnology  by Ed Regis – Bantam Books £7.95  0-553-50476-2

 

Shocked into life; how killer asteroids created Eden  by Gordon Osinski -  New Scientist; 13th Sept 2003 p40.

Oxygen and carbon detected in alien atmosphere  - Chemistry World; March 2004 p7.

An icy atmosphere; CO3 could be the key to formation of interstellar ices -  C.J.Bennett et al Chem.Phys.,2004,6,735.

Evaporating acids are the key to life - evaporation of aqueous solutions on hot surfaces was presumably a feasible event on the surface of a young earth  by Z. Takatis and R.G .Cook – Chemistry World; March 2004.

Rare Earth: Why complex life is uncommon in the universe  by P.D.ward & D.Brownleej        Pub. By Copernicus Books, New York 2000.

Are aliens hiding their messages by Marcus Chown – New Scientist; 10 May 2003 p22.

Extraterrestrials Everywhere: A 19th Century vision – Sky and Telescope Feb 2000

How the Moon gave life on Earth its first big break by Anil Ananthaswamy, New Scientist; p16, 20th March 2004.

 

This document was prepared by P.Thompson, Secretary of the Cleethorpes and District Astronomy Society.

www.cleethorpesastronomy.co.uk     Contact: paul@frenchstudio.co.uk

Any views expressed in this document are my own and not necessarily those of other members of the Society.

Details are believed to be accurate, but I would be grateful for anyone to point out any errors.  March 2004