Search for extraterrestrial intelligence

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a collective term for scientific searches for intelligent extraterrestrial life, for example, monitoring electromagnetic radiation for signs of transmissions from civilizations on other planets.The size and age of the universe incline us to believe that many technologically advanced civilizations must exist. However, this belief seems logically inconsistent with our lack of observational evidence to support it. Either (1) the initial assumption is incorrect and technologically advanced intelligent life is much rarer than we believe, or (2) our current observations are incomplete and we simply have not detected them yet, or (3) our search methodologies are flawed and we are not searching for the correct indicators. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a collective term for scientific searches for intelligent extraterrestrial life, for example, monitoring electromagnetic radiation for signs of transmissions from civilizations on other planets. Scientific investigation began shortly after the advent of radio in the early 1900s, and focused international efforts have been going on since the 1980s. In 2015, Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced a well-funded effort called Breakthrough Listen. There have been many earlier searches for extraterrestrial intelligence within the Solar System. In 1896, Nikola Tesla suggested that an extreme version of his wireless electrical transmission system could be used to contact beings on Mars. In 1899, while conducting experiments at his Colorado Springs experimental station, he thought he had detected a signal from that planet since an odd repetitive static signal seemed to cut off when Mars set in the night sky. Analysis of Tesla's research has ranged from suggestions that Tesla detected nothing, he simply misunderstood the new technology he was working with, to claims that Tesla may have been observing signals from Marconi's European radio experiments and even that he could have picked up naturally occurring Jovian plasma torus signals. In the early 1900s, Guglielmo Marconi, Lord Kelvin and David Peck Todd also stated their belief that radio could be used to contact Martians, with Marconi stating that his stations had also picked up potential Martian signals. On August 21–23, 1924, Mars entered an opposition closer to Earth than at any time in the century before or the next 80 years. In the United States, a 'National Radio Silence Day' was promoted during a 36-hour period from August 21–23, with all radios quiet for five minutes on the hour, every hour. At the United States Naval Observatory, a radio receiver was lifted 3 kilometres (1.9 miles) above the ground in a dirigible tuned to a wavelength between 8 and 9 km, using a 'radio-camera' developed by Amherst College and Charles Francis Jenkins. The program was led by David Peck Todd with the military assistance of Admiral Edward W. Eberle (Chief of Naval Operations), with William F. Friedman (chief cryptographer of the United States Army), assigned to translate any potential Martian messages. A 1959 paper by Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi first pointed out the possibility of searching the microwave spectrum, and proposed frequencies and a set of initial targets. In 1960, Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake performed the first modern SETI experiment, named 'Project Ozma', after the Queen of Oz in L. Frank Baum's fantasy books. Drake used a radio telescope 26 metres (85 ft) in diameter at Green Bank, West Virginia, to examine the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani near the 1.420 gigahertz marker frequency, a region of the radio spectrum dubbed the 'water hole' due to its proximity to the hydrogen and hydroxyl radical spectral lines. A 400 kilohertz band around the marker frequency was scanned, using a single-channel receiver with a bandwidth of 100 hertz. He found nothing of interest. Soviet scientists took a strong interest in SETI during the 1960s and performed a number of searches with omnidirectional antennas in the hope of picking up powerful radio signals. Soviet astronomer Iosif Shklovsky wrote the pioneering book in the field, Universe, Life, Intelligence (1962), which was expanded upon by American astronomer Carl Sagan as the best-selling book Intelligent Life in the Universe (1966). In the March 1955 issue of Scientific American, John D. Kraus described an idea to scan the cosmos for natural radio signals using a flat-plane radio telescope equipped with a parabolic reflector. Within two years, his concept was approved for construction by Ohio State University. With a total of US$71,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation, construction began on an 8-hectare (20-acre) plot in Delaware, Ohio. This Ohio State University Radio Observatory telescope was called 'Big Ear'. Later, it began the world's first continuous SETI program, called the Ohio State University SETI program. In 1971, NASA funded a SETI study that involved Drake, Bernard M. Oliver of Hewlett-Packard Corporation, and others. The resulting report proposed the construction of an Earth-based radio telescope array with 1,500 dishes known as 'Project Cyclops'. The price tag for the Cyclops array was US$10 billion. Cyclops was not built, but the report formed the basis of much SETI work that followed.