Search for extraterrestrial Intelligence

See Ireland's largest SETI@home team PADDY'S IN SPACE

Since the dawn of time, humans have looked to the sky for answers to events that happen on Earth. Nowadays we still look to the heavens for answers, although our questions may be different, the attraction is still there.

There are literally billions of galaxies that contain millions of star systems with planets orbiting them, so it would be a fair assumption that there is some form of LIFE on these planets.

SPACE SHIP

That is not to say that all life forms need gravity or starlight to exist. However on planets similar to our own, intelligent live may have evolved in a similar fashion to ourselves some may be behind us in technical, artistic or social behaviour while others ahead.

Presently there is no conclusive proof, in the public domain of the existence of extraterrestrial life forms. This is where SETI comes in. At present they are analysing data in the form of radio waves which appear everywhere in the near and distant Universe.

 

visible light The electromagnetic spectrum

Most of these radio waves appear to come from natural sources.

A star gives of many types of "radio waves", some in the form of radio waves, visible light, infra-red light, x-rays and so on.

Collectively these waves are called the electromagnetic spectrum. In other words visible light is a form of radio wave that radiates at a higher frequency than your local radio station.

There is a lot of background natural static in the universe and to separate the static from signals that may be constant or generated in an artificial way would be a huge task even for a super-computer.

To solve this problem SETI have set up the Search for extraterrestrial Intelligence at home site where you can download software that works in the background or as a screen saver. When you first download the software and set it up, you are asked to download a file that contains data collected from a given telescope at a given time. The software then analyses the data and when finished, asks to to connect to the net to pass the information back to SETI and then, sends you the next lot of data to be analysed.

Apart from the obvious reaction, when and if an artificial signal is found, the idea of people working together from all over the globe on a common goal using the internet is another big story. This article does not cover the full story so if your interested in joining the search for extraterrestrial Intelligence at HOME or interested in who's participating go to their website.http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu  as the Lotto people say "If You're Not In You Can't Win " or It Could Be You!!

2 SPACE SHIPS