Quest to find life beyond Earth gets technological boosts
— -- The search for intelligent life in the universe is still on.
Despite the absence of interstellar tourists to date, astronomers at the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) are hoping that we are not alone.
And with new spacecraft to locate planets circling nearby stars, as well as more effective listening devices here at home, scientists have more tools at their disposal to find Earth-like planets or signs of other life forms.
But the possibility of intelligent life is what interests scientists at SETI. Using SETI's 42-antenna Allen Telescope Array in Northern California, they can listen in many directions for unusual radio signals coming from space.
According to institute astronomer Seth Shostak, Carl Sagan posited that more than a million civilizations might be capable of broadcasting signals. Scientist and author Isaac Asimov hypothesized that the number might be half that. SETI astronomer Frank Drake has estimated the number might be closer to 10,000.
These represent the more optimistic calculations that have been put forward, but if these scientists are even in the ballpark, Shostak believes the Allen Telescope Array may well find extraterrestrial life in the next two dozen years.
Meanwhile, NASA's Kepler telescope is collecting and transmitting data on a targeted band of stars up to 3,000 light-years from our sun, looking for planets that might be capable of hosting life as we know it. What's more, scientists say any evidence for or against interstellar company probably will tell us even more about ourselves.
"Finding extraterrestrial life will provide crucial insights concerning the origins of life," says astrophysicist Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI).
"The ultimate mind-changing idea is, 'What if we find something?' " says SETI astronomer Jill Tarter, who was the inspiration for Jodie Foster's alien-hunting character in the 1997 movie Contact and who was a consultant on the film. "That 'something' is going to be so different from us. It would hold up a mirror to the entire planet and trivialize the differences among us that we find so incredibly divisive."
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