“We know there are hundreds of billions of Earth-like planets. We also know that all kinds of complex organic molecules are found in the Galaxy. That is, there is everything that, as it seems to us, is necessary for the origin of life.
So I think the chances that there is life elsewhere in the galaxy are pretty high.”(Andrew Simion, director of the SETI Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley).
Where to look for our "brothers in mind" in the vast expanses of the Universe? The unique program "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) tried to answer this question 55 years ago.
The search for the homeland of little green men, about which ufologists talked so much, began with the Ozma project, launched in 1960 by astrophysicist Frank Drake. Drake's team began listening to space on the 25-meter Green Bank radio telescope in the direction of nearby sun-like stars: tau Ceti and epsilon Eridani.
The project ended without result, but in 1971 NASA joined in the search for signals, proposing the Cyclops plan. It provided for the use of one and a half thousand radio telescopes and was supposed to cost almost ten billion dollars. Two decades of hard work did not bring any discoveries, and in 1993 the project was mothballed.
For the years that followed, SETI survived on modest private grants and donations. Suddenly, in the 55th year of the program's existence, Russian businessman Yuri Milner announced the allocation of one hundred million dollars for a ten-year search for intelligent life in the Universe. World renowned physicist Stephen Hawking will be one of the project's scientific consultants.
Promotional video:
FOLLOWING KEPLER
In 1988, a violent hurricane knocked down the Green Bank radio telescope, and twelve years later in its place arose the largest full-turn and ultra-sensitive radio telescope of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
A hundred-meter antenna of a 77,000-ton structure is capable of receiving up to a gigabyte of data per second. Radio astronomers decided to search at wider frequencies, trying to receive more signals. One of 86 exoplanets selected from 1,235 planetary systems discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope will be scanned every day.
“With the help of large radio and optical telescopes, we will be looking for electromagnetic or light radiation that may come from technology built by some highly evolved intelligence living on a planet that orbits one of the stars in the Galaxy,” said Andrew Simion, director of the research center SETI of the University of California at Berkeley.
Another member of the SETI project was the Arecibo Radio Astronomy Observatory, Puerto Rico.
In 1974, an interstellar telegram was sent from its 305-meter "dish" located in the mouth of an extinct volcano and suspended on three 110-meter towers towards the globular star cluster M13.
Such a recipient at a distance of 25 100 light years was not chosen by chance, because such clusters of stars are the oldest in our Galaxy, which means they can contain highly developed civilizations.
The Arecibo Message contained the position of the solar system, an image of a person, and chemical formulas. However, taking into account the colossal distance, our distant descendants will receive an answer only in 52166 years.
Arecibo scientists have selected planets with temperatures from 0 to 100 degrees Celsius, lying in the conditional planetary "belt of life."
Subsequent observations of this outstanding tandem of radio telescopes did not bring anything new, showing the profound conventionality of the planetary region of life. Indeed, even in our solar system, Venus, Mars, and the Moon are included in the "Goldilocks zone" (as Western astronomers call the "belt of life") …
Nevertheless, the very principle of preliminary selection of potential objects of observation using space telescopes gave rise to a new round of SETI research.
THEY WILL ANSWER … UNTIL 2025
Exactly 20 years ago, American SETI enthusiasts, dissatisfied with the meager funding from the Capitol, NASA and the Pentagon, decided to create their own research center, which exists with private donations and grants from charitable foundations.
This is how the non-profit SETI Institute was founded in Mountain View, California. At the same time, the famous astronomer Jill Tarter was the permanent director of the SETI research center for 35 years (!) Until 2012.
Those who have read the wonderful novel Contact by the outstanding astronomer and popularizer of science Carl Sagan will surely remember the astrophysicist Ellie Arroway, who devoted her life to searching for intelligent radio signals from space. In the film of the same name, Jodie Foster brilliantly portrayed her selfless service to science.
Meanwhile, behind the image of Dr. Arroway stood exactly Dr. Tarter, whom Sagan knew well. Professor Tarter is considered the largest astrobiologist and at one time was even named among the hundreds of the most influential people on the planet according to the Times magazine.
Having retired, Professor Tarter is in every possible way seeking the minimum couple of million dollars for more or less stable work of the institute and research center. According to her, the termination of state funding for SETI will inevitably lead to losses for the United States in the field of radio astronomy research technologies.
It was Tarter who was at the forefront of the large-scale Phoenix project, which included the study of thousands of nearby sun-like luminaries in the radio frequency range of 1200-3000 MHz. This project used extremely sensitive instruments capable, in principle, of detecting the radiation of a conventional aerodrome radar at a distance of hundreds of light years.
For two decades, the SETI Research Center has managed to scan thousands of stars, using a modest annual budget of $ 5 million for such an institution.
In ongoing work and forward-looking research, the new leadership at SETI intends to focus on working with NASA's Kepler team. At the same time, Dr. Tarter believes that the vast experience of the staff of the SETI center will help to detect "alien signals" even before Kepler and other space telescopes find a habitable planet in the "zone of life."
Alas! So far, the only and rather controversial result can be considered the signal received on January 5, 2012 in the direction from the exoplanet KOI 817.
WORKING PROJECT IN MILLIONS
In 1999, the amazing "project of millions of users of the World Wide Web - SETI @ home" was launched in the radio astronomy laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley. At the heart of this unusual mission was the recruitment of millions of Internet users who want to participate in the search for signals from alien intelligence.
SETI enthusiasts should download special programs that work in screensaver mode from the World Wide Web. These programs process the radio signal packets received by radio telescopes during the current SETI mission.
Currently, the team of green men search engines has already replenished with several million users from more than two hundred countries. They have already spent more than a billion dollars on electricity alone, although this is imperceptible for every participant in the project. This is the most ambitious scientific project in the history of the Internet today!
And although the SETI @ home project never found a single sensible signal, Milner's team wants to connect to it, which, in addition to Stephen Hawking, was supported by Jill Tarter, radio physicist Dan Wertimer, who leads the Arecibo project, and the leading astronomer of the SETI Institute Seth Shostak …
The latter confidently predicts that if you use the most expensive Allen telescope system of 350 antennas, it will "stumble upon a signal before 2025."
Oleg ARSENOV