This presentation examines some of the work being done to find extraterrestrial intelligence, including the search for exoplanets that may be able to harbor life.
Transcript:
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence tries to find out if we are alone in the universe. Ancient stories of creation say that humans were placed on the Earth by divine intervention. The modern theory of evolution proposes that humans originated by a gradual transition from primordial molecules to multicellular organisms. If this happened on the Earth, it could have also happened in other planets.
People have always been fascinated by the possibility of life in other planets. The War of the Worlds by English author H. G. Wells is one of the earliest science fiction novels of a conflict between mankind and an extraterrestrial race. The book describes the invasion of southern England by Martians with advanced technology. A live broadcast of a drama based on this book on October 30, 1938 caused panic among the listeners in the United States because they thought that the Earth was really being invaded by Martians.
There is a link to this radio program in the description below. Currently, the space industry is making great strides with communication satellites, weather satellites, and space stations. Space exploration is shifting from being sponsored by government agencies to private businesses like SpaceX. Science fiction has provided inspiration for the space industry. The Space Shuttle Enterprise was named after the Starship Enterprise from the Star Trek television series. The idea that there are intelligent extraterrestrial species is more popular today than ever before.
The SETI Institute is a research organization incorporated in 1984 whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life. The SETI Institute began as a NASA program. Over the years, other research disciplines have been added by their relevance to the search and understanding of life beyond Earth. Today, the Institute has approximately 100 scientists.
In 1961, American astronomer Frank Drake, who was a founder of the SETI institute, proposed a probabilistic equation to stimulate scientific dialogue about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
The equation estimates N, which is the number of civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable.
R* is the rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life.
Fp is the fraction of stars that have planets.
Ne is the number of planets per solar system that can potentially support life.
Fl is the fraction of suitable planets that actually develop life.
Fi is the fraction of planets that develop intelligent civilizations.
Fc is the fraction of intelligent civilizations that develop electromagnetic communication technology.
L is the average length of time during which such civilizations can communicate.
Unfortunately, the values for the factors are very difficult to estimate, and the uncertainties are so large that the equation cannot be used to draw firm conclusions.
In 1976, NASA sent the Viking 1 and Viking 2 space probes to Mars with four types of biological experiments. Of these experiments, the Labeled Release Experiment returned positive results on both landers, however the control tests could not confirm the results. We may have already found bacterial life in Mars, but we cannot say for sure. Future missions will be needed to verify this.
In 1972, the United States launched Pioneer 10. This was the first mission to the planet Jupiter. After getting a gravitational boost from Jupiter, Pioneer 10 became the first artificial object to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System.
The Pioneer spacecraft carried a plaque designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake. It depicts a nude man and a woman in front of the parabolic antenna of the space probe, and it includes the planets of our solar system. This was the first physical message sent into space. The plaque was designed to be understandable by extraterrestrials who may encounter it.
In an interview with the BBC, Carl Sagan said: "there are stars which are billions of years older than our Sun. Some of them very likely have planets, and therefore, I can imagine civilizations immensely beyond the capabilities of our own"
The Allen Telescope Array is a radio telescope array dedicated to astronomical observations and a simultaneous search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The array is situated at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, 290 miles northeast of San Francisco, California. The telescope array is named after Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft, who has contributed more than 30 million dollars to the project.
In the Star Trek television series they use a universal translator to talk to the aliens in English. Thus far, we cannot even understand dolphins who are intelligent and seem to call each other by name. They use whistles and clicks to coordinate their activities for hunting and to defend themselves from predators.
The Kepler space telescope was launched on March 7, 2009 by NASA into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. Its mission was to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars. Kepler's sole scientific instrument was a photometer that continually monitored the brightness of approximately 530,506 stars and detected 2,662 planets during its 9-year lifetime.
The Kepler telescope found planets by looking for the slight dimming of a star caused by the transit of a planet in front of the star. The cyclical patterns of dimming can be used to determine the orbital period of the planet.
Panspermia is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, planetoids, and also by spacecraft carrying unintended contamination by microorganisms.
An expedition of meteorite hunters found a meteorite in the Allan Hills of Antarctica on December 27, 1984. Its chemical composition indicates that the meteorite originated in Mars. It is thought that the piece of rock was blasted away from the surface of Mars by the impact of another meteor about 17 million years ago, and it fell on Earth roughly 13,000 years ago. In 1996, a group of scientists claimed to have found evidence for microscopic fossils of bacteria in the meteorite, suggesting that these organisms also originated on Mars. These findings are very controversial and they have been generally rejected by the mainstream scientists.
For now, you will only see scary aliens on TV. But don't worry. The United States is building a border wall that should keep the aliens out, except for Area 51. Shhh… that's supposed to be a secret…
