What is SETI?
SETI is an acronym for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It is an effort to detect evidence of technological civilizations that may exist elsewhere in the universe, particularly in our galaxy. There are potentially billions of locations outside our solar system that may host life. With our current technology, we have the ability to discover evidence of cosmic habitation where life has evolved and developed to a technological level at least as advanced as our own.
SETI is an acronym for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It is the science of using telescopes, radio and optical, to search the skies for signals from alien civilizations. The idea of SETI began in 1959 with the publication of a paper in the British journal Nature by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison. The paper discussed the possibility of the existence of alien civilizations and how we might be able to detect them. Their conclusion was that the easiest method of detection would be radio waves. Radio waves were chosen because they are capable of traveling the vast distances between stars and can be generated with reasonable amounts of power. We have been sending radio waves out into space for more than sixty years. All of our radio, TV, satellite, and radar signals are currently spreading out throughout the galaxy. Perhaps they’ve already been detected by someone.
SETI stands for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. The acronym was coined in the early 1960’s to describe the activities of a handful of radio astronomers who were seeking evidence of the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. SETI exists as a specialized sub-discipline within the field of Radio Astronomy. The question “Are we alone?” has haunted humankind since first we realized that the points of light in the night sky are other suns. It was only within the late twentieth century, however, that our technology began to advance to the point where we could begin to seek scientific evidence to help answer this age-old question. The origin of modern SETI can be traced to the publication of Cocconi and Morrison’s article “Searching for Interstellar Communications,” in the September 19, 1959 issue of the British science periodical Nature.
SETI, or the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, is a project which aims to detect extraterrestrial intelligent life. SETI primarily uses radio telescopes to search for extraterrestrial signals, although optical telescopes and other methods have been proposed. Any discovery of intelligent alien life by SETI would have profound implications for humanity’s future; a negative result would imply that we are alone in the universe, and that the rise of intelligent life was a rare, freak-chance event. The sky, as a whole, is not a strong radio emitter; terrestrial sources of radio waves are already far stronger than anything observed with radio telescopes. Any civilization which has discovered radio waves should throw off a steady stream of information into space, much as we have been doing with radio and television broadcast stations. Detecting these signals, if they exist, is a huge challenge, given all the potential sources of noise.