Twinkle, twinkle, little star, oh, SETI, wonders what aliens you are?

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, oh, SETI, wonders what aliens you are?

For those of you that have been asleep the last ten years, SETI is the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence - an effort that has had more than a few ups and downs in the last few years.

One of the criticisms that is always levelled against the great dishes scanning the stars for radio signals from ET, is that radio is a fairly primitive technology for such advanced alien life to be using.

Light is far faster, so how about laser communications? For the more advanced species, gravity pulse networks are also a hot favourite for the interstellar mobile phone network (or even tugging on quantum strings, for the really sophisticated ETs).

Radio is a bit like a kid sitting in the back yard with two cans connected with a length of string trying to initiate first contact.

Well, we haven't got gravity pulse networks yet, and our understanding of quantum theory is pretty much as the tin can end of telecommunications development, but heck, lasers we can do. Or rather, heck, the Planetary Society can-do.

This bunch of scientists and dreamers (funded by grants from the late great Carl Sagan) are building a new optical facility set for a ribbon-cutting ceremony late next year.

They're the same fine fellows that fund the SETIathome project - the parallel signal processing screensavers you can download and run at home to help the search for alien life.

Good on you chaps over at www.planetary.org, but bad on the short-sighted US government who have now cut almost all funding into SETI projects. Anyway, called, rather imaginatively, the All-Sky OSETI Observatory, this new facility is set to extend out search for alien life from radio to laser communications.

Lasers - as modern-day telecommunications experts will already know - have a massive carrying capacity compared to radio, and even with our current 21st century tech, we could build a comms laser able to squirt out beams five-thousand times more intense than a star.

The OSETI theorists think that space-based laser communications would be a very powerful but short-burst affair, happening too fast for any of our existing current optical telescopes to pick up.

It's for this reason the new gear the OSETI crew are rigging up can scan for communications with a burst rate if one billionth of a second, which let's face it, is frigging impressive.

Now all we have to do is wait until gravity pulse science catches up a little, and we'll have three of the four major bases covered.

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Kevin Hull. 02/02/2001
The question we should be asking is not 'is there alien life out there?', but 'should we answer if we do find it?'. No, no, and no is the answer. Any interaction between ourselves and a more advanced species will lead to trouble for Earth.

Eric Crook. 02/02/2001
Kevin, if everyone was like you, we'd still be striking a flint against wood in a cave somewhere. Of course we should try to find and contact alien life. It is the destiny of mankind to try.

Eric Crook. 03/02/2001
Mr. Hull, remember that we transmit as well as receive - we have, in effect, been answering since the invention of the wireless. As for your argument on advanced species interaction, however, I'm inclined to agree. Look at what the advanced western world has done to those societies it's contacted so far? May I point out the Native Americans as an example? Still, burying our heads in the sand hardly seems to be a decent alternative.

Dean Costello 04/02/2001
If you are interested in helping out the SETI program from home, go to: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu What this does is allow you to download pieces of data from the SETI program (mine currently is working on a hunk from Arecibo, Puerto Rico, from November 11, 2000. The idea is that if people process small bits of SETI data, results will be generated faster.

Philip Simon 02/02/2001
I agree with Eric. Just imagine , the information that we could exchange and discover the answers to the question why do we exist at all?