The SETI Project

Listing Pattern

The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project is a worldwide effort by scientists to look for signals from other intelligent beings in the universe and it is fascinating to me because the project explores what people have always wondered. Is there anyone else out there? And if so, are they trying to communicate with us? I would like to examine this more closely and I am going to start with a couple of questions. First, why do some many of us assume that there are other intelligent beings in the universe? And second, if they really exist, how we can find them?

Let’s talk first about this assumption that there must be intelligent life. First, let’s think about our planet earth. We have life on this planet because we have the right conditions. We have sun gives us heat and we have water which every living being requires and as a result, over a long time intelligent life has developed here. Although, sometimes we do not see that intelligence. Anyway, now think of all the stars in the night sky. Each star that you see could be a sun like our sun with planets around it and our galaxy the Milky Way; there are two hundred billion stars at least. Well, and throughout the universe which is all of out-space, there are at least a hundred billion other galaxies. You do the math! That is billions and billions of stars and maybe one of those stars somewhere in another galaxy is like our sun and maybe that sun has a planet like our earth with the right conditions for life to develop. And maybe intelligent life has developed and those beings just like us are wondering: Is there anyone out there? With this assumption, it seems very probable that somewhere out, there is another intelligent life as well.

But then, the next question is: If there are intelligent beings out there, how they are going to communicate with us? In cultures, movies, and TV the aliens always arrive in a spaceship. But actually, that would be very difficult. For one thing, the universe is really-really big and spaceships just do not travel very fast. Take, for example, the star Alpha-Centauri in the Milky Way. It is 4.2 light-years away. If we use the fastest rockets it would take 60,000 years to reach Alpha-Centauri. ‌Therefore, traveling here by spaceship would also take way too long. But think about it. When you want to visit someone far away. Do you just jump in a plane and fly over there? No! You email or text them or you give them a call first. Right or do not you? So, it makes much more sense if these aliens want to communicate, they will not just travel all the way here to earth. Instead, they will give us a call first.

Assuming that there are intelligent beings out there, trying to communicate with us, and trying to give us a call. What do we look for? Particularly, how do we look for those signals? Well! The SETI search looks for radio signals coming from out-space. They use large radio telescopes located all over the world to listen to these signals. These telescopes look like big round dishes and work as a big joint ear listening to signals from out-space. So, we are making the other assumption here that the aliens will communicate with us by the radio signals.

Why radio signals? First, because the technology to make radio signals is not very complicated. We have had radio signal technology for more than a hundred years. Therefore, we are assuming that other beings probably have this technology as well. Second, the speed of radio signals. They travel at the fastest speed in the universe. The speed of light. So, imagine this. If radio signals were sent from Alpha-Centauri that get here in almost 4 years and that is a lot faster than 60,000 years that a spaceship would take.

We have these radio telescopes and we are listening but what are we listening for? I mean, are we waiting for the aliens to send a voice mail saying: Hello! Anybody home? Absolutely not. We are not listening to something like that. We are not even listening to words or languages. Instead, we are looking for very strong signals that stand out and that is different from other signals in space or it has series or sequence of signals showing some kind of order. We assume that if a signal is very strong and a series or a sequence that has been sent intentionally, sent by someone. Then, we will pay attention and we will listen some more and try to find out who is sending it and what it means.

Now, here is really something to think about. What happens if we find a signal that we think is from aliens? This is something the scientists or the SETI project have planned for.