Astronomers Hope to Find E.T. in Next 25 Years

Reuters via Yahoo! ^ | Tue Jul 16, 6:34 AM ET | By Belinda Goldsmith

[Momaw Nadon]

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Scientists searching the stars for aliens are convinced an E.T. is out there -- it's just that they haven't had the know-how to detect such a being.

But now technological advances have opened the way for scientists to check millions of previously unknown star systems, dramatically increasing the chances of finding intelligent life in outer space in the next 25 years, the world's largest private extraterrestrial agency believes.

"We're looking for needles in the haystack that is our galaxy, but there could be thousands of needles out there," Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at California's non-profit Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ( news - web sites) (SETI) Institute, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

"If that's the case, with the number of new star systems we now hope to check, we should find one of those in the next 25 years."

But Shostak, visiting Australia to attend a conference on extraterrestrial research, said detecting alien life, like the big-eyed alien in the film E.T., was only the start.

"Even if we detect life out there, we'll still know nothing about what form of life we have detected and I doubt they'll be able -- or want -- to communicate with us," Shostak said.

Since it was founded in 1984, the SETI Institute has monitored radio signals, hoping to pick up a transmission from outer space. Its Project Phoenix conducts two annual three-week sessions on a radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

Project Phoenix, widely seen as the inspiration for the 1997 film "Contact" starring Jodie Foster, which depicted a search for life beyond earth, is the privately funded successor to an original NASA ( news - web sites) program that was canceled in 1993 amid much skepticism by the U.S. Congress.

But the search has been slow. About 500 of 1,000 targeted stars have been examined -- and no extraterrestrial transmissions have been detected.

E.T. NOT ON THE LINE

"We do get signals all the time but when checked out they have all been human made...and are not from E.T., more AT&T," said Shostak.

He said the privately-funded institute was developing a giant US$26 million telescope to start operating in 2005 that can search the stars for signals at least 100 times faster.

The so-called Allen Telescope Array, named after sponsor and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is a network of more than 350, six-meter (20-foot) satellite dishes with a collecting area exceeding that of a 100-meter (338-foot) telescope.

The Allen array, to be built at the Hat Creek Observatory about 290 miles northeast of San Fransciso, will also expand the institute's stellar reconnaissance to 100,000 or even one million nearby stars, searching 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Shostak said he is convinced there is intelligent life out there -- but don't expect to find a loveable, boggle-eyed E.T..

He said if any aliens share the same carbon-based organic chemistry as humans, they would probably have a central processing system, eyes, a mouth or two, legs and some form of reproduction.

But Shostak thinks any intelligent extraterrestrial life will have gone light years beyond the intelligence of man.

"What we are more likely to hear will be so far beyond our own level that it might not be biological anymore but some artificial form of life," he said. "Don't expect a blobby, squishy alien to be on the end of the line."

[DAnconia55]

Even if they discover 100 billion solar systems, that is not enough to make it likely that there is even one other Earth.

Modern Astronomy now disagrees with you and Commie Carl Sagan. Check into it.

[DAnconia55]

There's no mention of potatoes, either. Lost your faith, yet?

LOL... really. Too much.

Oxygen isn't mentioned either. Methinks he's a heretic. He's breathing.

[Sabertooth]

There's no mention of potatoes, either. Lost your faith, yet?

Oh, I see where you're going with this... life-forms from a "New World."

OK, I'll concede the possibility, though not the likelihood, of extraterrestrial spuds. But I draw the line at cabbages.

[TADSLOS]

Astronomers Hope to Find E.T. in Next 25 Years

Translation: "Federal funding has dried up and we need more taxpayer $$$$ to turn on the lights."

[freedombird]

AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Don't do that again!!!!

Shame on you for posting that picture without ample warning!!!

[Physicist]

Amazingly, this Bubbah just got done telling G-D that he may not create any races but our own!!!

Some people just know how to sell conservatism.

[VOR78]

There are an awful lot of things not mentioned in the Bible that do in fact exist. I highly doubt those billions upon billions of stars and probably just as many galaxies are just there to look at (especially when we can see maybe 3,000 of all those stars on a clear night). There is a reason God put the rest of them up there.

[Windsong]

"Why couldn't GOD have created other beings?"

He DID! Some of their names...

Gabriel

Michael

Uriel

Raphael

Although they have to inhabit the spiritual realm to do anything of real interest to themselves I suspect.

[RadioAstronomer]

These atheists can look all they want but they are going to find any UFOs. They don't exist.

SETI is not a search for UFOs. My search is looking for a species radiating EM into space from their planet/solar system.

[RoughDobermann]

SETI is not a search for UFOs. My search is looking for a species radiating EM into space from their planet/solar system.

Well, stop wasting your friggin time! EM wasn't mentioned in the Good Book; therefore, it doesn't exist. Aren't you glad you showed up now?

[RadioAstronomer]

Isn't it also a little pretentious to "believe" that we aren't alone?

I don't "believe" one way or the other. All I do is search. If we are alone that is momentous, if we are not, that too is momentous. SETI is win win science.

[RadioAstronomer]

God created all things and there his no mention of "aliens" in His word.

There is no metion of rotating Neutron Stars either. But they exist.

[VOR78]

Now as for SETI, it is a waste of time in its current form. Now I do believe an alien civilizations are out there, possibly within our own galactic neighborhood ( within 100 LY). Unfortunately, I do not believe we are advanced enough to detect them . I doubt they are using radio waves (in fact, I doubt we will be in another 100 years). Also, there is the big problem of background noise. These earth based dishes pick up a whole lot of static in the form of earth-bound radio transmissions as well as satellite interference. They need to get a reciever up into space and away from all of the trash. Visual astronomy took a giant leap forward with the Hubble; now they need to do the same with radio astronomy. Once they do that, it MIGHT have a chance, but it goes back to my first point; they must also be using radio waves for communication.

[Bringbackthedraft]

If there are as many planets as there are grains of sand on the world beaches, certainly there are other life forms out there in the universe. To dismiss it is being naive. Maybe not in the form of man (God's image). The Good Book says many things that can be interpreted in many different ways but all the Good Books were written and translated by men (mostly monks who wanted to "stay employed" in their field).

[Frank_Discussion]

"I don't "believe" one way or the other. All I do is search. If we are alone that is momentous, if we are not, that too is momentous. SETI is win win science."

That's a good way to see it, I'll agree. And SETI is win-win science in that regard, except for searches outside the EM bands.

Don't get me wrong, I think SETI is on the right track in terms of searching. Emerging technological civilizations should be expected to discover EM broadcasting pretty easily, so we should pick up such stuff someday. And it is indeed momentous.

Keep in mind, though, interstellar communication (not merely searching) is likely to exist, though via methods we don't know how to intercept.

Yet.

[demlosers]

the Brookings Institute 100 page report is alive and well I see.

[Tolik]

O-ooo. This subject is so rich for the flight of imagination. Why have not we contacted the aliens yet? Or more likely, why nobody contacted us? There can be a number of reasons. To expand on your example of faster-then-light communication. If it is indeed just a science-fiction and no faster-then-light communication or movement is possible, it would severe limit anybody ability to communicate through so long distance. Encouraging fact is that science taboos sometimes are proven wrong. Just a few centuries ago we did not know a small portion of what we know today. There indeed can be a litmus test for the young races to knock on the door of the Universal community, if any, to announce themselves. Similar to the warp-drive signature of the Star Trek Universe.

Discouraging fact, on another hand, is that even if ET do exist, what is a chance that our one century of technological advance out of billions years of the Universe existence brings us on the level where anybody is interested to meaningfully communicate; in any other way that we communicate with frogs by dissecting them?

[Frank_Discussion]

"I doubt they are using radio waves (in fact, I doubt we will be in another 100 years)."

Perhaps sooner than, VOR78.

"Also, there is the big problem of background noise. These
earth based dishes pick up a whole lot of static in the form of earth-bound radio transmissions as well as satellite interference. They need to get a reciever up into space and away from all of the trash."

The far side of the Moon is a pretty radio-quiet piece of real estate. Let's get up there!

[RadioAstronomer]

Well, stop wasting your friggin time! EM wasn't mentioned in the Good Book; therefore, it doesn't exist.

LMAO

[LRS]

Didn't mind your post at all, Frank_Discussion. I too, support SETI, and agree with your assessment about lack of willingness to consider other ways of thinking that certain fields of science gets itself wrapped up in, and I too am not wanting to sound "tin foilish" here, but, consider this other thread that is ongoing:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/586511/posts

Now, I don't want to go off on one of my Immanuel Velikovsky rants here, but one thing that was learned from the entire Velikovsky affair is how set in dogma some science can be, and at the time of the releasing of his "crackpot notions", the reponse to Velikovsky went beyond reason, and that attack was later spearheaded by Sagan, who even took shots at Velikovsky after he had died. What made all this worse, was that it was not Velikovsky's more outlandish sounding claims that seem to upset the scientists at the time, but rather items that we are now taking for scientific fact, such as the Earth's being struck by other bodies such as comets and asteroids at a far greater rate than was beleived in 1950, and that these bodies affected the world's history, including mankind's, even up into the era that we consider to be mankind's civilisation building period, ideas that were scientific heresy even up into the 1970's, for those notions challenged the Marxist underpinnings of that dogma.