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SETI Institute
Radio antennas stand sentinel at the Allen Telescope Array, north of San Francisco.
The SETI Institute's search for extraterrestrial intelligence is back on track, thanks to more than $200,000 in donations from thousands of fans.
"We're not completely out of the woods yet, but everybody's smiling here," the institute's chief executive officer, Tom Pierson, told me today.
In April, the institute had to put its big ear for hearing E.T.'s radio call, the 42-antenna Allen Telescope Array in Northern California, into "hibernation" due to budget woes. The biggest hit was the loss of funding by the University of California at Berkeley, the institute's partner for operating the antenna array.
The SETI Institute has been around for decades: It stepped in to help keep the search for alien radio signals active after NASA cut off funding for the quest in 1993. It's not the only organization doing SETI, but it's the leader in the field. The Allen Telescope Array, or ATA, was launched with $50 million in contributions from software billionaire Paul Allen and others — and if the array ever takes in 350 linked antennas, as it's designed to do, it would rank among the world's premier radio-telescope facilities.
But in light of the financial challenges, that's a huge "if" right now. In fact, until last week it wasn't certain if or when the ATA would come back online.
After the antenna array was mothballed, the institute and its fans in Silicon Valley set up a Web-based campaign for donations, known as SETIstars. The campaign kicked off in June, and about 45 days later, on Aug. 3, contributions hit the $200,000 mark. That was how much money the SETI Institute said would be needed to bring the antenna array back into operation. (Since then more than $4,000 in additional contributions have come in.)
Among the contributors are Jodie Foster, the actress who played a SETI researcher in the movie "Contact"; science-fiction writer Larry Niven, creator of the "Ringworld" series of novels; and Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, who flew around the moon in 1968. "It is absolutely irresponsible of the human race not to be searching for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence," Anders wrote in a note accompanying his contribution.
Pierson said the institute's managers and scientists were drawing up a plan that would restart science operations in September.
"We think we're going to come out of hibernation and be solid for the next five months or so, and during those five months we're going to take care of calendar year 2013 and put that under our belt," he said.
Pierson acknowledged that the ATA's long-term success would "require a mix of funding," including continued contributions as well as renewed cash flow from other applications for the radio array. The institute is hoping that the U.S. Air Force will use the array to track orbital objects that otherwise might pose a threat to the International Space Station and other satellites. During the daytime, the ATA could be used for the Air Force's "debris deconfliction," and during the night it could search for alien signals, Pierson said.
The institute is also looking for ways to reduce the array's operating costs from the current level of $1.5 million per year, plus another $1 million for science operations, Pierson said. "We need to transition to a new modality without UC-Berkeley," he said.
Eventually, astronomers at the SETI Institute hope to use the ATA to listen for signals from the most promising planetary systems identified by NASA's Kepler planet-hunting mission. Jill Tarter, the institute's director of SETI research, said in April that the fund-raising target for the Kepler follow-up project would be $5 million.
The institute has already set up a website called setiQuest, where citizen scientists can help sift through the data expected from the ATA, and SETIstars will remain open to receive donations, Pierson said. He had two messages for the SETI supporters: "No. 1 is how grateful we are," he told me. "More than 2,000 people jumped in and help. Also, stand by for future campaigns from SETIstars. We hope to build opportunities that will really excite the public."
More about the search for alien signals:
- New E.T. hunt tunes in on Earthlike planets
- Calculate the odds of finding E.T.
- Are we alone in the universe? Well, maybe
- Gallery: 50 years of searching for E.T.
- Search for extraterrestrials on msnbc.com
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Heck yeah!! That's some good news, I was hoping donations would get it going again. :) Hmm, reminds me that I still need to put SETI@home on my new machine.
Mitchell
I'm very glad SETI reached it fundraising goal, but it saddens me a little that they need to seek money through crowdfunding. This scientific endeavor is worthy of support from governments and foundations, as well as big time and small fry philanthropists.
Waste of time and money. The post signal protocol for Seti is to turn any signal received over to the government and let them decide if they want the public to be informed. Aliens are here on earth and visit daily we tons of data that show this even Nasa has released UFO data.
Conspiracy theories are best left for Alex Jones website not MSNBC.
It's not YOUR time and money being wasted, so why do you care?
It may not be exactly my money but how do you think these people who donated all this money would feel if they were to find out that SETI HAS received intelligent signals for ETs and has denied this - let alone kept this information from the public. And this is EXACTLY what has happened. Conspiracy theory? Please take the word “theory” out of the sentence. If you want to believe the status quo and not open up your mind I cannot stop you, but we all certainly have the right to voice our own opinion here.
OK, the standard line of conspiracy nuttery, is when you ask for evidence, the "big bad government " forcibly hid it, so nothing can ever be proven. since nothing can be proven that makes the conspiracy nuttery"right" in the minds of the conspiracy nuts
wilieturner wrote, "...if they were to find out that SETI HAS received intelligent signals for ETs and has denied this - let alone kept this information from the public. And this is EXACTLY what has happened." And you know this how?
How much did public television receive so far?
Not certain why this question . . . public TV has a mechanism to reach many for donations. We've explored most of this planet, we need to explore others - this is a great passive method but we need more aggressive methods to explore the solar system.
I beg to differ. We have not even scrathed the surface of this Earth.
I wonder if S.E.T.I. is going about the task of searching for alien signals in the cosmos the wrong way? An Advanced civilization would not use regular radio waves as they know that the radio signal would eventually be lost somewhere in the Higgs-Boson field thus causing the signal to degrade and observed as nothing more than background radiation coming from the Universe.
I wonder if......
Enjoyed reading your perspective. Had another thought though, what if we're the superior intelligence? We often think that there is some phenominal intelligent lifeform out there but what if we're it?
Of course you can. And I can GUARANTEE that the Federal Govt. will pay off it's entire debt in the next three days.
@scalpaca: It's almost impossible that we are the superior intelligence. Go on Wikipedia and read up on the vastness of the Universe. There are millions of galaxies, with billions of stars in each, with billions of worlds that could support life forms. Just run the numbers, and you'll get it.
meebs, the other possibility is that intelligence is even more rare than we think it is. there is no evolutionary "push for intelligence". and frankly, it looks like "intelligent" species have a tendancy to destroy themselves rather quickly.
it may well be possible that you are unlikely to find more than one intelligent species at a time, despite the (literally) astronomical numbers.
sad, but still a possibility. on the other hand, we could just be missing something in the search, or maybe the others simply aren't interested in communicating with anyone else.
you are very right . . . and what you've said, has given me a lot to think about . .. so silly of me not to think about it earlier . .. . but i wouldn't be surprised, if you were right on the money :-)
As I understand it, there is no evolutionary push for anything other than survival. That intelligence can confer a survival advantage is clear. Also, do you have evidence for your claim that intelligent species tend to destroy themselves quickly? The only "intelligent" species we know of is homo sapiens, who have not destroyed themselves. You need a sample larger than one (which doesn't even support your theory) to make your claim anything other than an unsubstantiated hunch.
true enough interested fellow, I have but a single sample to draw conclusions from, and it appears that we may well destroy ourselves. I sincerely hope that that does not happen, but I am becoming less optimistic as superstition and pure greed overtake reason and enlightened self-interest.
as to intelligence confering a long-term survival advantage. well, the jury is still out on that one. let's just say I hope so. species survival is infinitely preferable to extinction.
Great thread. @Henry, I agree with most of what you guess. However, consider your assumptions on the part about organic intelligent beings. Many intelligent life forms may not be carbon-based as on Earth, but silicon-based, or another element. I believe a moon of Jupiter has such analogs. Read up on this. Life forms based on other elements could take on radically different forms.
In your #4, your theory is based on the premise that AI programmed machines are superior to organic intelligence. That may be true for humans. But other life forms may not have the same deficiencies as humans.
Throw out assumptions.
Donate some of your money and be remembered around the planet as being part of the facility that located the first Extra Solar Entity signal. By donating today you will be securing a place in history for your family forever.
Actors, politicians, sport figures come and go throughout history but being part of the history of making first contact will reign forever.
Stupid asses!!!
that a mirror you're looking in?
I think the money should be used for the dieing children in Africa , and all over the world! Not explore what or who is out there, we all know its just us from the future! FEED THE HUNGRY AND CURE AIDS THAT YOU THE GOVERMENT MADE! BLESSINGS OF LOVE and good health to those not yet awakened..
do we really want any body to know where we are?we could spend our money on better things,like feeding the dieing in Africa.
I don't think we have to chose.
With so much science whittled down over the past three decades, I do believe I have just stumbled over some good news!! Thank you all that donated to help the seti program limp along a little longer. This is a ray of sunshine on a dreary year. We americans are a funny and surprising society. I have posted many times that an advanced civilization that is not monitoring the ENTIRE electromagnetic spectrum in the name of discovery may not be that advanced, no matter what advanced method of communication they might use in their daily routine. The EM spectrum, and the RF spectrum in particlar is latched full of information from all sorts of phenomenae, and the concopulated chatter from I love lucy transmissions et all is so diverse from anything natural that anything with a modicom of curiosity is going to devote some attention to it's analysis, however brief that attention may be!!...thus, our switch to digital tv has reduced the total power output of the planet in the rf spectrum and introduced an added complexity to it's encoded information not present in analog signals..to wit, cw am is still alive and well and just about now reaching some of the nearer stars....as well, many theories posist that quatum entanglement, a bit of a misnomer and mostly a set of misused theories posisted for grant funding, is a natuaral phenomenom and one needs do nothing more than move particles around for it to occur, well, no et's responded yet but we must look under ever nook and cranny we can since absence of evidence is not evidence of abcence...personally, et was here, we are freed (or ecaped) mining drones, and et really has desire to communicate with us, lest we figure out thier book, how to serve man....(ok dry humor, i admit)....then again, pulsars and quasars and spinning mangetars are surely natural navigational beacons...to hypothesise that some are contrived by et's is worthy of some ink.
There ain't no such animal.
I do mean perhaps et's don't want to call us, don't want no postcards and they may very well not want us to visit them!! I hope that ain't the case...till they say so, we gotta listen, else we end up traveling a long way from home for nothing....alpha centuri is not a good place to be ducking salted buckshot tossed at us from elle may clampet's and her granny's heater....ya know.
they don't want a bunch of superstitious ape-men running around in their neighborhood, it lowers property values.
"Are we there yet."
Lets hope this doesnt go all Contact on our asses
There is one little problem with plugging into a quantum network from my understanding. It's usually based on quantum entanglement of pairs of molecules (atoms?) which means when one is excited, the other is excited at the same time regardless of distance (how does this work with speed of light? I digress...).
In other words, you need to physically plug one of the pairs into the system which means you first need to get to the network hub before you can plug in. Radio gets there faster than we can physically, based on currently accepted theories.
Go SETI... Glad to see your still in business.
We are the aliens, GOD being the pilot and Adam and Eve being one of the fruitful couples who left our dying planet, maybe Mars? I truely believe we are the aliens who came here form another planet, why wouldnt we be? We are doing it right now, searching for inhabital palnets. We have found ancient carvings depiting space travel. The piramids, still a mystery.. not really, technology brought here by our alien ancestors.
But why? Are we sure this is a good (let alone, best) way to do this. My hunch is that radio waves may be our own initial primitive way to communicate and no one else's. So the assumption that intelligent civilizations on other planets are using radio waves may be inherently flawed!
After all, in the span of a few short decades we here on earth are moving on to using the internet to send and receive data, communications, entertainment. The odds are that others are doing things differently imo..
Murphy's Law dictates that a signal was sent and missed while SETI was in hibernation.
SETI should sell some of the CPU cycles used by SETI@HOME for commercial purposes and use the money generated to fund their operation.
First off, lets set the record straight...while SETI is a cool idea, it is a complete joke. Not only is it a burden on the taxpayers (you & me) money, but it has never accomplished anything even remotely important. Paul Allen, you wasted your money (unless of course, SETI decides to pull a fast one on you and claim your telescope array you so generously donated for found ET signals). Truth is folks, extraterrestrials have been visiting humanity since the dawn of mankind, and that could not be closer to the truth. I promise, I am not here to lecture anyone or brainwash you into believing things you choose not to believe, but what we are dealing with when it comes to the ET & UFO topic is plain common sense. Being the grandchild of a former Air Force pilot who flew in the Korean War and witnessed upfront an alien spacecraft can attest to this. Not to discount human ingenuity, the Pyramids of Egypt & South America, Stonehedge in the UK and countless other gargantuan monuments were absolutely not constructed by human hands alone. Yes, humans did build these structures at the behest of superior intellgence from other worlds lending a hand with their technology. This can be seen clear as day in ancient scripture, cuneiform, heiroglyphics on the walls of the Pyramids and other documents and texts. Roswell was real. Kecksburg was real. Rendlesham was real. Shag Harbour was real. Water (salt water) currently flowing on Mars is not new news (for those of you who havent heard, scientists and NASA just released their findings). What the public does not understand, for the most part, is that this is the slowest delay of information ever concocted and collaborated on by the World's Government's including the lead of them all, the good old USA. I am patriotic of my country but the time for secrecy on certain aspects of this topic needs to come clean. In fact, if the public has not noticed, the attitude towards this subject in most media outlets, especially in this country have taken a complete 180 degree turn. Please, everyone, open your minds and open your eyes to the truth. If our ancestors were alive today they would tell you the same thing. Keep waking up in the morning, eating your breakfast, go to work, make your money, come home go to sleep, and live life to the fullest, but just remember, we are not alone, have not been alone, and will never be alone for as long as this Universe exists. With that being said, we will all know very soon...
while I am not anywhere near as certain as you are about visitations, I still don't rule out the possibility, I simply remain skeptical.
that being said, some people ask: "why don't they introduce themselves"?
I asked the question on a conservative right-wing website one time" : "what would you do if aliens actually did show up and did not appear hostile?"
almost all answered that they would fight the aliens for because of the threat that "those cold emotionless aliens" represented.
clearly the only thing actually threatened was the inflexible belief system of a bunch of religious, fossils and nutcases no better than the Taliban.
the automatic reaction was that the aliens would represent some kind of demon.
with nuts like that, no intelligent species is going to want to make contact.
The Cult of SETI is the bad joke of science. It is scanning the vastness of space to focus on civilizations @ our level of development. C'mon if a civilization is 1,000 years more advance than we are, what the chances they are still using radio waves? Do we still use any technology from 1,000 years ago beyond agricultural use?
SETI's view is so narrow there is better hope of finding a soft spot in the heart of Dick Cheney than alien life forms!
Now let's talk to SETI about the possibility of interstellar travel... of course they'll say no because they can't think beyond their own ego.
Waste of $, better to have put the $ into the Space Elevator.
hey if you are really stupid enough to want to contact an alien culture which would be at least if not more advanced than we are try broadcasting a signal to star systems with know planetary systems. Don't just passively listen. My self i hope no one out there finds us cause if they do we are @#$%!!!!!
"During the daytime, the ATA could be used for the Air Force's "debris deconfliction," and during the night it could search for alien signals, Pierson said." I don't get it. What difference does it make to a radio telescope whether it's day or night? And how does a radio *receiver* track orbiting objects which are not transmitting? Unless they're planning on turning some of the dishes into transmitters (hence radar)?
Perhaps NWOwatchdog could be a little more specific than "imminent"? UFO believers have been making variations on that prediction for a long time now, and it's never come true yet...