#SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

[boardgoats]

Golden Geek Awards - 2025

The winners of BoardGameGeek‘s Golden Geek Awards have been announced this month.  There are many Game awards, with the foremost being the Spiel des Jahres Awards and Deutscher Spiele Preis, Both of these are German in origin, with the Spiel des Jahres awards chosen by a panel of experts and the Deutscher Spiele Preis resulting from an open vote by games clubs, gamers and people in the industry. …

[santmat]

Worst Case SETI Scenario

Worst Case SETI Scenario, by James Bean

Say we find a habitable planet that’s virtually an earth-twin in orbit around a nearby star… like maybe Barnard’s Star. We come to see this “Barnard’s Star C” as an “Earth 2.0”.

If an ET civilization similar to ourselves (a military power with a thirst for real estate and resources) happens to reside there, they too might be looking at Earth through their end of the telescope and say to themselves: “Hey! Barnard’s Star C 2.0” and have the very same ideas about star-shot probes, exploring and eventual colonizing that we would have.

At only a distance of six light-years, our obnoxious colonizing Klingon neighbors bearing beads and blankets claiming to own the land according to their self-proclaimed superior economic system might figure out a way to get here one day. Oops! Oh well!

[spacenutspod]

Embark on a cosmic voyage with host Steve Dunkley in today's episode of Astronomy Daily - The Podcast. Recorded on April 29, 2024, Steve returns from a brief hiatus, refreshed and ready to navigate the latest celestial developments. From the UN's contentious debates over nuclear weapons in space to the hopeful promise of a new comet, this episode is packed with interstellar intrigue and excitement. We kick off with a look at the UN's standoff, where Russia's veto of a resolution against the militarization of space sets a tense backdrop for future cosmic diplomacy. Then, Steve shifts gears to the exhilarating discovery of Comet C/2023 A3 (Sachinchan-ATLAS), a celestial visitor that could dazzle us with its brilliance—or could it be another cosmic letdown? Steve shares his personal reflections on past cometary spectacles and the unpredictable nature of these icy wanderers. Our journey continues with NASA's upcoming Boeing Starliner crew flight test, a mission that places astronauts Butch Wilmore and SUNY Williams at the forefront of a new chapter in space exploration. The episode also celebrates Earth Day with a look back at NASA's global selfie event and the Dragonfly rotorcraft's ambitious mission to Saturn's moon Titan, promising to revolutionize our understanding of these distant worlds. Finally, we dive into the profound connection between water and the search for extraterrestrial life, as Steve discusses METI International's poignant message aboard NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft, destined for Jupiter's icy moon Europa. Join us for an episode that bridges the gap between earthly concerns and the boundless potential of the cosmos. This is Astronomy Daily - The Podcast, where every episode is a journey into the heart of the universe. --- **Featured Topics:** 1. **Nuclear Weapons in Space:** Russia's controversial veto at the UN and the implications for space security. 2. **Comet C/2023 A3 (Sachinchan-ATLAS):** The discovery of a new comet and the anticipation of its potential spectacle. 3. **Boeing Starliner's Crew Flight Test:** The countdown to a landmark mission with NASA astronauts aboard. 4. **Earth Day Reflections:** NASA's celebration of our planet with a global selfie event. 5. **Dragonfly's Titan Mission:** The future of extraterrestrial drone exploration on Saturn's intriguing moon. 6. **Europa Clipper's Water Message:** METI International's transmission of humanity's connection to water across the cosmos. --- **Additional Information:** For more cosmic content, visit astronomydaily.io, and join us on our Space Nuts podcast group or on X (@AstroDailypod) to share your favorite stories and engage with fellow space enthusiasts. Until next time, this is Steve from Down Under, reminding you to keep your eyes to the skies and your heart in the stars. Clear skies and boundless curiosity to all our fellow stargazers! This episode is brought to you by NordPass, the password manager that secures your celestial data. To grab our special offer and find out more, visit www.bitesz.com/nordpass Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-podcast--5648921/support #space #astronomy #news #podcast #comets #spaceexploration #NASA #UN #nuclearinspace #Starliner #EarthDay #Dragonfly #EuropaClipper #METI  

[lenbryant]

Only 12 oz?

[mysticstronomy]

WHAT IS THE KARDASHEV SCALE??

Blog#431

Wednesday, August 28th, 2024.

Welcome back,

What might we find: little green men or microbes? How might we find them: radio waves or strange chemicals in the planet's atmosphere? Something no one has even thought of yet?

Over the decades, scientists considering the possibility of life beyond Earth have pondered what such life might look like, how humans might be able to identify it from afar — and whether communication between the two worlds might be possible.

That thinking has included developing classification systems ready to fill with aliens. One such system is called the Kardashev scale, after the Soviet astronomer who proposed it in 1964, and evaluates alien civilizations based on the energy they can harness.

The Kardashev scale is a classification system for hypothetical extraterrestrial civilizations. The scale includes three categories based on how much energy a civilization is using.

Kardashev describes type I as a "technological level close to the level presently attained on the Earth," type II as "a civilization capable of harnessing the energy radiated by its own star" and type III as "a civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy."

Each type also includes a numerical cut-off for the energy involved, but those weren't arbitrary cut-offs. "He used things that are easy to visualize," Valentin Ivanov, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory who has built on Kardashev's work, told Space.com.

"I'm almost tempted to say it's a publicity stunt, these comparisons that he uses to make it easier for people to understand."

Kardashev's scale is included in a five-page paper published in 1964 and called "Transmission of information by extraterrestrial civilizations." (The paper was originally published in Russian, but an English translation was published the same year.)

Although the scale is what caught people's imaginations, "Transmission of information by extraterrestrial civilizations" focuses on calculating how powerful a light signal from any point of the universe would need to be for radio scientists at the time to detect it.

This value is also the numerical cut-off for the energy use of a type II civilization.

Nikolai Kardashev was a Soviet and Russian astrophysicist who died in 2019. Kardashev was roughly contemporary with early search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) leaders like Frank Drake, who published his famous equation three years before Kardashev's paper; Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison, who predicted what an extraterrestrial signal might look like; and Freeman Dyson, who pondered ways alien civilizations could surpass the limits of a planet.

In addition to his scale, Kardashev developed a technique called very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI), which uses a global network of radio dishes as one radio telescope the size of Earth. Perhaps most famously, VLBI is used by the Event Horizon Telescope to observe black holes, including producing the first ever black hole image, published in 2019.

Kardashev also proposed supplementing Earth-based network VLBI observatories with space-based telescopes to increase its observing power even more. He advocated for the Russian mission RadioAstron, which launched in 2011, to do just this sort of work, according to a review of VLBI developments.

Originally published on https://www.space.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, August 31st, 2024)

"IS THERE MORE ANTI MATTER THAN MATTER??"

[mindblowingscience]

Humpback whale "conversations" provide valuable insight on how humans may one day communicate with life beyond Earth.  Researchers from the SETI Institute, University of California Davis and the Alaska Whale Foundation recently "conversed" with a humpback whale named Twain using an underwater speaker and recorded a humpback "contact" call. Twain responded to the researchers' call by matching the interval variations between signals of each playback call over a 20-minute period.  If you're having a Star Trek flashback, yes, this is awfully reminiscent of that one film in which the crew receives alien whale transmissions that can only be decoded underwater. And in fact, mirroring our sci-fi fantasies, this demonstration of interspecies communication has implications for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, according to a statement from the SETI Institute. 

Continue Reading.

[lazyinfluencercat]

Uno strano silenzio. Siamo soli nell'universo? (Paul Davies)

Il saggio esplora la questione se siamo soli nell'universo, combinando rigore scientifico con riflessioni sociali e filosofiche (discute le strategie utilizzate per cercare segnali di vita intelligente e le implicazioni filosofiche di un eventuale contatto o della conferma della nostra solitudine nell'universo).

Paul Davies (fisico teorico e cosmologo noto per i suoi contributi alla comprensione dell'universo e della vita) affronta il tema del silenzio cosmico, ovvero la mancanza di segnali di vita intelligente extraterrestre nonostante le numerose ricerche condotte dal programma SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) dal 1960; si concentra sul paradosso di Fermi, che si chiede perché non abbiamo ancora trovato prove di civiltà extraterrestri, nonostante le alte probabilità statistiche della loro esistenza.

Davies esamina le possibili spiegazioni per il silenzio cosmico, tra cui la rarità della vita intelligente o la possibilità che civiltà avanzate evitino di comunicare con noi.

[objection-dot-lol]

This is a Green Bank Telescope appreciation post

the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) is located in Green Bank, WV

The GBT is a radio telescope, which means it collects electromagnetic radiation in the form of radio waves instead of visible light, allowing scientists to observe things that can’t be seen through a normal telescope

The GBT is 485 ft tall, making it 180 ft taller than the Statue of Liberty and 31 feet taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza

The telescope weighs 17 million pounds. All of that weight is distributed across 16 wheels, meaning each wheel holds over 1 million pounds of weight

The dish itself is 328 feet in diameter, making the GBT the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope

The GBT is currently being used for a project called Breakthrough Listen, which is an effort by SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) to detect radio waves coming from potentially alien technology

The GBT is so sensitive that only diesel vehicles are allowed near the telescope, since spark plugs generate too much radio interference

Surrounding the GBT is a roughly 13,000 square mile zone known as the National Radio Quiet Zone. The NRQZ encompasses areas of West Virginia, Virginia, and a very small part of Maryland

The Green Bank Observatory, which houses the GBT, has numerous other telescopes which have made various important discoveries. One of these telescopes, the Tatel 85-foot telescope, discovered the black hole Sagittarius A*

You can visit the Green Bank Observatory and see the telescope yourself! They offer tours and it’s really cool :)

[campomni]

Scientists are learning how to speak whale?

Camp Omni!! Did you know that there's a research team by the name of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) who are currently attempting to understand the communicative complexity and intelligence of humpback whales? A researcher from this team, Josie Hubbard, recently engaged in a conversation with one of the humpback whales her team had been studying. She had broadcasted a recorded humpback contact call through an underwater speaker and had found that their whale, "Twain", had responded to their call. This conversation had lasted for a total of 20 minutes. Isn't that wild?!

To find out more about this fascinating research study, feel free to visit the BBC article below: https://www.bbc.com/future/article /20240409-the-scientists-learning-to -speak-whale

Read more about Camp Omni here!

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Earth detecting Earth

A research team led by Dr. Sofia Sheikh of the SETI Institute, in collaboration with the Characterizing Atmospheric Technosignatures project and the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, set out to answer a simple question: If an extraterrestrial civilization existed with technology similar to ours, would they be able to detect Earth and evidence of humanity? If so, what signals would they detect, and from how far away?

Researchers used a theoretical, modeling-based method, and this study is the first to analyze multiple types of technosignatures together rather than separately. The findings revealed that radio signals, such as planetary radar emissions from the former Arecibo Observatory, are Earth’s most detectable technosignatures, potentially visible from up to 12,000 light-years away.

Atmospheric technosignatures—such as nitrogen dioxide emissions—have become more detectable than they were a decade ago, thanks to advances in instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope and the upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). With HWO we could detect these emissions from as far as 5.7 light-years away, just beyond our closest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri.

Finally, as you get closer and closer to Earth, you would detect more and more human-made signatures simultaneously, including city lights, lasers, heat islands, and satellites, offering a comprehensive view of our technological presence.

"Our goal with this project was to bring SETI back 'down to Earth' for a moment and think about where we really are today with Earth's technosignatures and detection capabilities,” said Macy Huston, co-author and postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, Department of Astronomy. “In SETI, we should never assume other life and technology would be just like ours, but quantifying what 'ours' means can help put SETI searches into perspective."

“One of the most satisfying aspects of this work was getting to use SETI as a cosmic mirror: what does Earth look like to the rest of the galaxy? And how would our current impacts on our planet be perceived,” said Sheikh. “While of course we cannot know the answer, this work allowed us to extrapolate and imagine what we might assume if we ever discover a planet, with, say, high concentrations of pollutants in its atmosphere."

SETI scientists search for advanced alien civilizations by looking for signs of technology -- signals or patterns that cannot be explained by natural phenomena that may indicate intelligent life. These signals are called technosignatures and come in various forms. Radio telescopes are the most commonly used tool for SETI searches. Researchers also use optical telescopes to scan for laser pulses that could indicate communication or propulsion patterns. Another approach involves studying the atmospheres of exoplanets in habitable zones around stars to look for chemical signatures that might suggest life or industrial activity. SETI scientists also consider technologies far beyond those currently invented on Earth, such as Dyson spheres, but these far-future technologies were not considered in this study.

This study demonstrates how Earth’s technosignatures can provide a multiwavelength framework for understanding the detectability of technology on other planets and shaping our search for intelligent life beyond Earth. Future telescopes and receivers could enhance our detection sensitivity or enable us to identify new types of technosignatures, such as such as other atmospheric signatures of pollution. Repeating this type of study over the years as astronomical technology advances and the human impact on the planet evolves could provide fresh insights and refine our approach to discovering extraterrestrial life.

TOP  IMAGE: Earth Detecting Earth animation video by Zayna Sheikh Credit Zayna Sheikh

LOWER IMAGE: The maximum distances that each of Earth’s modern-day technosignatures could be detected at using modern-day receiving technology, in visual form. Also marked are various astronomical objects of interest. Credit SETI Institute

[boardgoats]

Boardgames in the News: HandyCon Games Theft

HandyCon is a board game convention that takes place, roughly quarterly, in Milton Keynes.  Unlike other board gaming events like UK Games Expo and SPIEL, HandyCon is not a trade fair, but a convention where hundreds of people meet to play games together.  While many people bring their own games, one of the highlights is the Games Library which included over five hundred games and expansions. …

[kinialohaguy]

NILH

Aloha kākou. It’s Good Friday and the beginning of Easter Weekend. Wishing everyone a Happy Easter and Passover weekend. Merrie Monarch officially starts this weekend on the Big Island of Hawai’i. The activities have already started with cultural events. Hilo, Hawai’i is the place to be this weekend. Now to News of the Universe. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) was a project…

[peanutbutterandbananasandwichs]

8 and 19! (wrong blog btw!!)

(spotted the wrong blog and reblogged thanks x - why does tumblr insist on switching to your main blog after you've sent an ask so annoying lol) End of year asks 8. Game of the year?

I don't own any modern games consoles lol (we have a PS3 - I'd love to play more recent games but everytime I think about buying a new console I can't justify it to myself) so my video game of the year every years is Lego Lord of the Rings lmao but also I did replay Final Fantasy IX this year and I also still love that so much. I could also answer this as board game since I am much more up to date with those I really liked SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. (Also shout out to the Star Trek Lower Decks card game which is a really fun little party game which also allows 2 player! Ideal.) 19. What’re you excited about for next year?

A friend has asked me to perform in their new drag king cabaret in Oxford in Feb and I'm very excited about that and getting to perform a new king number I've been working on.

I'm excited to keep up my singing lessons, they have honestly been one of the best things about 2024 and one of the best presents I've ever given to myself. I've always been a singer and have desperately wanted professional voice lessons since I was a kid and finding a teacher who is SO good and understands how to work with neurodivergent clients and is just unbelievably kind and supportive is just :')

I'm also realllyyy looking forward to S2 of Sam Girl Retrospective Podcast coming out, we've been recording and I've listened to the first 4 episodes now they are edited and they are SO good (not biased at all lol).

[thoughtportal]

Ham Radio & More was a radio show about amateur radio that was broadcast from 1991 through 1997. More than 300 episodes of the program are now available online as part of the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC).

Ham Radio & More was the first radio show devoted to ham radio on the commercial radio band. It began as a one-hour show on KFNN 1510 AM in Phoenix, Arizona, then expanded to a two-hour format and national syndication. The program’s host, Len Winkler, invited guests to discuss the issues of the day and educate listeners about various aspects of the radio hobby. Today the episodes, some more than 30 years old, provide an invaluable time capsule of the ham radio hobby.just some of the HR&M cassette tapes

Len Winkler said, “I’m so happy that the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications took all my old shows and made them eternally available for everyone to hear and enjoy. I had the absolute pleasure, along with a few super knowledgeable co-hosts, to interview many of the people that made ham radio great in the past and now everyone can go back and listen to what they had to say. From the early beginnings of SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) to Senator Barry Goldwater to the daughter of Marconi. So much thanks to the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications for doing this amazing service.”

Other interviewees included magazine publisher Wayne Green, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Bob Heil, Bill Pasternak, Fred Maia, and other names well known to the amateur radio community. Discussion topics spanned the technical, such as signal propagation, to community issues, including the debate over the Morse code knowledge requirement for ham radio operators—a requirement eventually dropped, to the benefit of the community.

The radio programs were recorded on cassette tapes when they originally aired. Winkler digitized 149 episodes of the show himself in 2015 and 2016. The digitizing project paused for years. In January 2024 he sent the remaining cassettes to DLARC. Using two audio digitizing workstations, we digitized another 165 episodes in about three weeks. The combined collection is now available online: a total of 464 hours of programming, most of which have not been heard since their original air date. The collection represents nearly every episode of the show: only a few tapes went missing over the years or were unrepairable. 

The Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications is funded by a grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) to create a free digital library for the radio community, researchers, educators, and students. DLARC invites radio clubs and individuals to submit material in any format. To contribute or ask questions about the project, contact: Kay Savetz at kay@archive.org or on Mastodon at dlarc@mastodon.radio.

[hitheeprithee]

@ beloved mutuals who told me to read The Martian you were right you were right you were right-

Im only up to Ch. 9 but when I tell you it has already brought me to tears multiple times on the commute (while also cracking me tf up). The concept of SETI being trained on Mars to try and hear if Mark was sending a signal fucked me All the way up and I have not stopped thinking about it. All day.

You're telling me that the man who this book is about, THE MARTIAN, is being listened for with the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence tech????? I need to lie down for 1 million years Mr Weir I just wanna TALK-

[mysticstronomy]

WHAT IS THE GREAT SILENCE??

Blog#326

Saturday, August 26th, 2023

Welcome back,

The Fermi Paradox refers to the dichotomy between the high probability that extraterrestrial intelligence exists and the fact that we have no evidence for such aliens.

This paradox was described by the late British science-fiction author, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who said: "Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."

Many experts have grappled with the same question. Why, considering the multitude of planets and stars in the Milky Way, have we not heard from anyone?We call this problem the Fermi Paradox, and there are a number of possible solutions — some more unnerving than others …

The Fermi Paradox is a problem that asks, where are all the aliens in the universe? If life is so abundant, why haven't we been visited by, or heard from, anyone else?

According to NASA, in just the last two decades we have found more than 4,000 planets beyond our solar system, with trillions of stars thought to exist in our galaxy — most of which host their own planets.

Considering life sprang up on Earth, would we not have expected it to start in at least one other location in the last 14 billion years of the universe?

The Fermi Paradox was devised by the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, according to the Planetary Society.

He is said to have come up with the idea in a throwaway remark over lunch with colleagues in 1950 when he asked "Where is everybody?"

He wondered, given that our planet was relatively young compared to the universe, we might have expected someone to have visited us by now — but we had no evidence of that ever occurring.

Fermi died four years later, in 1954, so did not have long to ponder the question. But his idea has sparked whole fields of science hoping to solve the problem, including the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

There are a number of solutions to the Fermi Paradox. The most obvious, and likely, is that we simply haven't looked hard enough to find other life, and interstellar travel between stars is difficult.

The first planets beyond our own solar system were only discovered in the 1990s. This means we have barely started to scratch the surface of studying other worlds.

For example, we are yet to find many planets that look exactly like Earth, orbiting stars like our sun — but upcoming telescopes are hoped to be capable of such detections in the coming decade or two.

Even then, the distances between star systems are enormous, making journeys between them difficult. Our closest star system for example, Alpha Centauri, is four light-years away. The distance from Earth to Neptune, for comparison, is 0.0005 light-years — a journey that would still take us decades with current technology.

Intelligent aliens might simply have decided to never visit us, or did so long ago without leaving any trace.

Alternatively, it might be that life is simply so rare that the chances of two intelligent species being positioned relatively near each other in the vastness of space is exceedingly slim.

A more somber suggestion is that we are alone in the universe. Life, like that found on Earth, is simply so vanishingly unlikely to arise, that ours was the only world where this happened.

Most scientists think this is unlikely. But there is the possibility that some sort of event, known as a Great Filter, might prevent civilizations like our own from progressing far enough to make contact elsewhere.

Originally published on livescience.com

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, August 30th, 2023)

"HOW DOES THE CONCEPT OF TIME CHANGE IN THE PRESENCE OF STRONG GRAVITATIONAL FIELD??"