SETI 'Earth Speaks': Want To Say Hello To An ET?
Posted: 04/18/2013 9:38 am EDT | Updated: 04/18/2013 1:55 pm EDT
Want to say hello to an ET? SETI scientists are here to help.
People in Seattle and other parts of the Northwest recently weighed in on what they would want to say to intelligent creatures from another planet.
At the SETI Institute in California, home of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, an ongoing program called Earth Speaks
is collecting messages from citizens of Earth, young and old. They're
looking for public opinions on the best way to say hello to the cosmos.
And what kinds of things are people submitting?
- "If you want to come visit us here on Earth, you're welcome...but be prepared to witness a huge mess. Sorry 'bout that."
- "Greetings from the People of Earth, the world
we call our home. We come from many types of governments, faith groups
and beliefs, yet are all of the same world. Many of us believe we are
alone in the vast Universe, yet others think we are part of a vast
Interstellar family, and if you are reading this, we hope that if we are
part of that family, we will become a happy family together."
For half a century, SETI has scanned the skies with radio telescopes,
looking for any type of intelligent, non-terrestrial evidence that
might prove earthlings aren't alone in the universe.
While a few random signals have been picked up by the telescopes,
there has never been a pattern that could be considered as having an
intelligent, extraterrestrial origin.
Broadcast signals that emanate on Earth theoretically travel on a
never-ending path across space. A technology-savvy civilization, on a
planet orbiting a sun near our own solar system, may be just now picking
up old radio and television broadcasts that left our world decades ago.
“If you take your rabbit ears and put them on a planet around Alpha
Centauri and try to pick up the original broadcasts of “I Love Lucy,”
you wouldn’t be able to. But if you built a big enough antenna, you
could pick them up at any distance,” said Seth Shostak, senior SETI
astronomer.
Earth Speaks is SETI's research project to help scientists determine the proper way to introduce ourselves "out there."
Watch SETI Scientist Douglas Vakoch On Talking To Aliens
"It's a project to shift the discussion from just a handful of
scientists who've been thinking about what happens if we detect
intelligent life beyond Earth, and really make it a global discussion,"
said Douglas Vakoch, SETI's director of Interstellar Message
Composition. Vakoch, a clinical psychologist from the California
Institute of Integral Studies, is the only social scientist employed by
SETI.
"At this point, we've had people from over 70 countries submit their
messages," Vakoch told The Huffington Post. "The second thing we do is
analyze those responses that people are sending us and look for some of
the broader themes and also look at what that says about us here on
Earth."
Vakoch points out the similarities that people want to say to potential extraterrestrials.
"We discovered that a major theme is: 'We are the humans of planet
Earth.' What's striking about that is that we identify ourselves in
these messages to extraterrestrials. We focus on our connectiveness and
our commonality. People aren't typically saying, 'I'm from Australia' or
'I'm from the United States,' 'I'm Buddhist' or 'I'm Catholic.'"
There's one thing, especially, Vakoch says, that many people have
consistently submitted in their messages that they hope will someday be
sent into space -- one theme that resonates with men and women, young
and old.
"The big message that cuts across all ages in both sexes is a very simple one: 'Please Help.'"
Check out these following message samples that have been submitted. If you want to see many more, go directly to SETI's Earth Speaks message page.
Vakoch suggests one of the reasons why there haven't been a lot of
ongoing projects to transmit messages and try to make contact is
because, in some ways, people have a cosmic inferiority complex.
"What do we have to tell another being? If they're so old and
powerful, what do we have that matters? I could well imagine that, of
all the civilizations in our galaxy, we're the ones that have the most
exquisite balance of joy and sorrow. There's something about being at
this critical juncture of our history as a civilization that may be very
unique, and I think is more important to communicate and to reflect on
for ourselves, whether or not there's even anyone out there."
To help get you in the mood to offer a heartfelt message to the
stars, let's put this into a proper perspective -- the perspective of
how very tiny we are compared to everything else around us.
In 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft was nearly 4 billion miles away
from Earth, leaving our solar system at 40,000 miles per hour.
Astronomer Carl Sagan asked NASA
to turn Voyager's camera around and snap a picture of our home planet.
It became known as the Pale Blue Dot photograph in which Earth appears
at the center of a ray of light, resulting from the angle between Earth
and the sun. (See this amazing image below)
"We're really trying to understand our place and significance in the
universe," said Vakoch. "It's completely insignificant on a cosmic scale
and supremely important.
"It's symbolized so beautifully by the Voyager spacecraft. When it
finished its science mission of going through the solar system, it took
this snapshot that showed Earth as this pale blue dot. In that sense,
that spacecraft was saying, 'Look, on a cosmic scale, everything on this
little planet that we view as so important is insignificant in the
whole universe.'
"But the beautiful thing about that spacecraft is the message it bore
said exactly the opposite, which is, 'Look, whatever our limitations as
a species, we can learn about our universe, we've developed a science
and the audacity to explore beyond our own planet."
According to Shostak, radio waves can be used to carry audio and
pictures, and you can put any kind of information you want on them.
And what would Shostak send into space as his own contribution to Earth Speaks?
"I would send the Internet, because the more you send, the greater
the likelihood they'll figure some of it out," Shostak told HuffPost.
"I'd just send everything. It's also one-way communication. They're
probably far away and you're not going to get into a discussion about
what you sent, so I'd just send it all. That's me."
You can go to SETI's Earth Speaks website 24 hours a day to submit your message and become part of the project of what earthlings would like to say to extraterrestrials.
At this point, there's no specific planned date for transmission of
those messages into space, but SETI scientists want to gather as many as
possible. They also want to know if the people of Earth think we
shouldn't be sending a message to the cosmos.
Also on HuffPost:
Loading Slideshow
- NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Planet
IN
SPACE - UNSPECIFIED: In this handout illustration made available on
December 5, 2011 by NASA, the Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably
circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star is digitally
illustrated. For the first time NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed a
planet to orbit in a star's habitable zone; the region around a star,
where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist. The
planet is 2.4 times the size of Earth, making it the smallest yet found
to orbit in the middle of the habit. Clouds could exist in this earth's
atmosphere, as the artist's interpretive illustration depicts. (Photo
Illustration by Ames/JPL-Caltech/NASA via Getty Images) - NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Planet
IN
SPACE - UNSPECIFIED: In this handout illustration made available on
December 5, 2011 by NASA, a diagram compares our own solar system to
Kepler-22, a star system containing the first 'habitable zone' planet
discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. The habitable zone is the sweet
spot around a star where temperatures are right for water to exist in
its liquid form. Liquid water is essential for life on Earth. The
diagram displays an artist's rendering of the planet comfortably
orbiting within the habitable zone, similar to where Earth circles the
sun. Kepler-22b has a yearly orbit of 289 days. The planet is the
smallest known to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a
sun-like star and is about 2.4 times the size of Earth. (Photo
Illustration by Ames/JPL-Caltech/NASA via Getty Images) - Artist's conception released by NASA of extrasolar planet HD 209458 b, also known as Osiris
Artist's
conception released by NASA of extrasolar planet HD 209458 b, also
known as Osiris, orbiting its star in the constellation Pegasus, some
150 light years from Earth's solar system. Scientists have used an
infrared spectrum -- the first ever obtained for an extrasolar planet --
to analyze Osiris' atmosphere, which is said to contain dust but no
water. The planet's surface temperature is more than 700 Celsius (1330
Fahrenheit).' AFP PHOTO NASA HO (Photo credit should read
HO/AFP/Getty Images) - Artist's impression of a Jupiter-sized planet passing in front of its parent star
SPACE:
Picture released 04 October 2006 by the European Space Agency shows an
artist's impression of a Jupiter-sized planet passing in front of its
parent star. Such events are called transits. When the planet transits
the star, the star?s apparent brightness drops by a few percent for a
short period. Through this technique, astronomers can use the Hubble
Space Telescope to search for planets across the galaxy by measuring
periodic changes in a star?s luminosity. The first class of exoplanets
found by this technique are the so-called ?hot Jupiters,? which are so
close to their stars they complete an orbit within days, or even hours. A
seam of stars at the centre of the Milky Way has shown astronomers that
an entirely new class of planets closely orbiting distant suns is
waiting to be explored, according to a paper published 04 October 2006.
An international team of astronomers, using a camera aboard NASA's
Hubble telescope, delved into a zone of the Milky Way known as the
'galactic bulge', thus called because it is rich in stars and in the gas
and dust which go to make up stars and planets. The finding opens up a
new area of investigation for space scientists probing extrasolar
planets - planets that orbit stars other than our own. AFP PHOTO
NASA/ESA/K. SAHU (STScI) AND THE SWEEPS SCIENCE TEAM (Photo credit
should read -/AFP/Getty Images) - Picture released 04 October 2006 by the
-,
SPACE: Picture released 04 October 2006 by the European Space Agency
shows an artist's impression of a unique type of exoplanet discovered
with the Hubble Space Telescope. This image presents a purely
speculative view of what such a 'hot Jupiter' (word dedicated to planets
so close to their stars with such short orbital periods) might look
like. A seam of stars at the centre of the Milky Way has shown
astronomers that an entirely new class of planets closely orbiting
distant suns is waiting to be explored, according to a paper published
04 October 2006. An international team of astronomers, using a camera
aboard NASA's Hubble telescope, delved into a zone of the Milky Way
known as the 'galactic bulge', thus called because it is rich in stars
and in the gas and dust which go to make up stars and planets. The
finding opens up a new area of investigation for space scientists
probing extrasolar planets - planets that orbit stars other than our
own. AFP PHOTO NASA/ESA/K. SAHU (STScI) AND THE SWEEPS SCIENCE TEAM
(Photo credit should read -/AFP/Getty Images) - The Goldilocks Planet: Glises 581 G
Scientist have found a new potentially habitable planet. - Imagining Extrasolar Planets
From
the Spitzer Science Center. While astronomers have identified over 500
planets around other stars, they're all too small and distant to fill
even a single pixel in our most powerful telescopes. That's why science
must rely on art to help us imagine these strange new worlds. From
Spitzer Space Telescope. Even without pictures of these exoplanets,
astronomers have learned many things that can be illustrated in artwork.
For instance, measurements of the temperatures of many "Hot Jupiters,"
massive worlds orbiting very close to their stars, hint that their
atmospheres may be as dark as soot, glowing only from their own heat.
While "Hot Jupiters" would be relatively dark in visible light, compared
to their stars, their brightness is proportionally much greater in the
infrared. Illustrating this dramatic contrast change helps explain why
the infrared eye of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope plays a key role in
studying exoplanets. As our understanding evolves, so must the artwork.
Astronomers found a blazing hot spot on the exoplanet Upsilon Andromedae
b that at first, appeared to face towards its star. More data has
revealed that the hottest area is actually strangely rotated almost 90
degrees away, near the day/night terminator. WASP 12b is as hot as the
filament in a light bulb, and would be blazing bright to our eyes. Most
interestingly, if it proves to have a strongly elliptical orbit, as
first thought, calculations show it would be shedding some of its outer
atmosphere ...
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