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‘Blue Stragglers’ in the Galactic Bulge by Paul Gilster on May 30, 2011 I’m fascinated by how much the exoplanet hunt is telling us about celestial objects other than planets. The other day we looked at some of the stellar spinoffs from the Kepler mission, including the unusual pulsations of the star HD 187091, now known to be not one star but two. But the examples run well beyond Kepler. Back in 2006, a survey called the Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search (SWEEPS) used Hubble data to study 180,000 stars in the galaxy’s central bulge, the object being...

A massive radio telescope in rural West Virginia has begun listening for signs of alien life on 86 possible Earth-like planets, US astronomers said Friday.The giant dish began this week pointing toward each of the 86 planets -- culled from a list of 1,235 possible planets identified by NASA's Kepler space telescope -- and will gather 24 hours of data on each one. "It's not absolutely certain that all of these stars have habitable planetary systems, but they're very good places to look for ET," said University of California at Berkeley graduate student Andrew Siemion. The mission is part of...

A monitoring system for potential extra-terrestrial communication has been shelved due to budget cuts. The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in California has been mothballed, according to the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (Seti) Institute. Funding for the observatory, which hosts the ATA, has been cut to one-tenth its former level. The Seti Institute was established in 1984 to look for life beyond Earth. The telescopes, at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory north of San Francisco, California, have a number of science goals, including searching for radio signals from intelligent life in the Universe. "Effective this week, the ATA has been placed...

If E.T. phones earth, he'll get a "disconnect" signal. Lacking the money to pay its operating expenses, Mountain View's SETI Institute has pulled the plug on the renowned Allen Telescope Array, a field of radio dishes — popularized in the Jodie Foster film "Contact" — that scans the skies for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. In an April 22 letter to donors, SETI Institute CEO Tom Pierson explained that last week the array was put into "hibernation," safe but non-functioning, due to inadequate government support. The timing couldn't be worse, say SETI scientists. After millenniums of musings, this spring astronomers announced...

Explanation: No one knows for sure what caused this signal. There is a slight possibility that it just might originate from an extraterrestrial intelligence. The bright colors on the blue background indicate that an anomalous signal was received here on Earth by a radio telescope involved in a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). A search for these signals is ongoing by several groups including volunteer members of the SETI League. Time labels the vertical axis of the above plot, and frequency marks the horizontal axis. Although this strong signal was never positively identified, astronomers have identified in it many...

The ‘slow boat’ to Centauri concept we’ve discussed before in these pages envisions generation ships, vessels that take thousands of years to cross to their destination. And based on current thinking, that’s about the best we could manage with the propulsion systems currently in our inventory. Specifically, a solar sail making a close solar pass (a ‘sundiver’ maneuver) could get us up to 500 or 600 kilometers per second (0.002c), making a 2000-year journey to the nearest star possible. It’s hard to imagine under what circumstances such a mission might be launched.But let’s think long-term, as Greg Matloff (New York...

An astronomer picked up a mysterious pulse of light coming from the direction of the newly discovered Earth-like planet almost two years ago, it has emerged. Dr Ragbir Bhathal, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, picked up the odd signal in December 2008, long before it was announced that the star Gliese 581 has habitable planets in orbit around it. Dr Bhathal had been sweeping the skies when he discovered a 'suspicious' signal from an area of the galaxy that holds the newly-discovered Gliese 581g. The remarkable coincidence adds another layer of mystery to the announcement last night...

Seth Shostak, a top astronomer at SETI has recently suggested that instead of trying to listen for standard transmissions from advanced alien biological lifeforms like ourselves, we should probably be listening for AI transmissions. This is based on our own experience, we as humans developed radio transmissions only a short while ago, considering the length of time our civilization has been advancing. And if we're any indication of the general route technologically capable life evolves, the galaxy is probably full of sentient AI collectives, not biological lifeforms. In an interview with the BBC, Dr Shostak said:"If you look at the...

Enrico Fermi’s paradox has occupied us more than occasionally in these pages, and for good reason. ‘Where are they,’ asked Fermi, acknowledging an obvious fact: Even if it takes one or two million years for a civilization to develop and use interstellar travel, that is but a blip in terms of the 13.7 billion year age of the universe. Von Neumann probes designed to study other stellar systems and reproduce, moving outward in an ever expanding wave of exploration, could easily have spread across the galaxy long before our ancestors thought of building the pyramids. Where are they indeed. Kelvin...

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Even if humanity could reach out to an intelligent alien civilization, scientists are polarized over whether we should. Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has argued that the extraterrestrials we contacted would be likely to harm us, a view that divided the experts here at the SETIcon convention. *SNIP* However, Douglas Vakoch, director of interstellar message composition at the SETI Institute, said of aliens: "Even if they tend to be hateful, awful folks, can they do us any harm at interstellar distances?"

Astronomers, actors and a host of other science-minded professionals will descend on California this weekend to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the SETI Institute and its mission to scan the universe for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Called SETICon, the public gathering includes a veritable feast of research presentations and discussions. Here, SETI Institute senior astronomer Seth Shostak offers a taste of what to expect and the big SETI shindig: What would happen if an Earthling astronaut encountered a Vulcan? Would they chat about the rigors of spaceflight, or merely chuckle about one another's misshapen ears?

Astrophysicist Gregory Benford — standing before the UCI Observatory — believes an alien civilization would transmit “cost-optimized” signals rather than the kind sought for decades by the SETI Institute. Courtesy of Steve Zylius For 50 years, humans have scanned the skies with radio telescopes for distant electronic signals indicating the existence of intelligent alien life. The search — centered at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, CA — has tapped into our collective fascination with the concept that we may not be alone in the universe. But the effort has so far proved fruitless, and the scientific community driving...

HAT CREEK, CALIF. -- The wide dishes, 20 feet across and raised high on their pedestals, creaked and groaned as the winds from an approaching snowstorm pushed into this highland valley. Forty-two in all, the radio telescopes laid out in view of some of California's tallest mountains look otherworldly, and now their sounds conjured up visions of deep-space denizens as well.

A computer administrator with the Higley Unified School District in Gilbert, Arizona, has resigned during an investigation into suspicious activity. He's accused of wasting district resources, totaling more than a million dollars to search for UFOs. The IT administrator is accused of installing a program on every one of the district's 5,000 computers. The school district was unknowingly the largest contributor to the "SETI" program, the search for extra terrestrial intelligence. Authorities say 38 year old Brad Nezloochowski rigged up Higley School District computers to help look for intelligent life in outer space. Superintendent Denise Birdwell says the district recently...

Many people make a distinction between the origin of life and the evolution of life. In this view, biological evolution refers to the gradual development of the diversity of living things from a common ancestor, while the ultimate origin of life is a separate question. This is a legitimate point, but evolution is about much more than just biology. The evolutionary worldview is that all of physical existence, both living and non-living, arose through purely natural processes. With this broad definition of evolution, abiogenesis--the spontaneous appearance of life from non-living matter--is a necessity. If life did arise on earth by...

A flash. Then complete darkness. I swerve wildly on my rickety bike, skidding on a soaked, winding path, squeezing my eyes shut and opening them in an attempt to get my eyesight back. Just when I regain my bearings (but not quite my eyesight), a sharp crack! throws me off my seat. I land awkwardly and stumble as the two dogs (Peach and Jasmine) scurry away to avoid me. Another flash sends them back up against my pant legs. They're shivering – fear? Cold? Probably both; thunderstorms aren't exactly great experiences for most non-humans, or most humans for that matter....

Aliens Lose in Switch to Digital TV By Seth ShostakSenior Astronomer, SETI Instituteposted: 18 June 200905:07 pm ET The United States is finally ditching analog television broadcasting, and the rest of the world is doing the same. Unless you've got a converter, the government has just morphed your trusty analog boob tube into an inert piece of furniture. Mind you, this is a good thing. Digital TV (DTV) offers better picture quality. For example, the ghost images caused by signal reflections off that high-rise office building down the block will be a thing of the past. In addition, you...

SETI Invites Alien Talk May 24, 2009 — They may not be saying much to us, but we can think about what to say to them – aliens, that is.  Space.com reported on the latest project from the SETI Institute: invite people all over the world to ponder, “What would you say to an extraterrestrial civilization?”     The SETI Institute is launching a new website, Earth Speaks, to gather people’s ideas about what we should say to an alien civilization should contact be made.  “By submitting text messages, pictures, and sounds from across the globe,” CEO Thomas Pierson explained,...

If you'd asked 20 years ago the question he's heard over and over -- whether humanity will discover extraterrestrial intelligence in his lifetime -- Frank Drake would have shrugged and said, "sure." Today, the renowned astronomer, who turns 79 next month, admits the chances are slimming. "It's going to be a close call," he said. But even if Drake, professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, doesn't see the day we learn we're not alone, he knows it's coming. To him, it's a mathematical inevitability. He should know. He wrote the formula. And...

« A symposium called Crossroads: The Future of Human Life in the Universe seems timely about now (the site has been down all morning but should be up soon). With the Kepler mission undergoing calibration and CoRoT actively searching for small extrasolar worlds, we’re probably within a few dozen months of the detection of an Earth-like world around another star (and maybe, by other methods, much closer). This is sometimes referred to as the ‘Holy Grail’ of planetary sciences, but as soon as we accomplish it, a new ‘Grail’ emerges: The discovery of life on these worlds. And then...