Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence

Introduction: Methods and Techniques

For almost as long as people have studied the sky, the question of whether intelligent beings exist elsewhere has remained. Until recently, only conjecture and flights of imagination provided any answers at all.

Mars, being one of Earth's closer planetary neighbors, often evoked conjecture. In the 1890's the astronomer Percival Lowell misinterpreted the discoveries of a contemporary, Giovanni Schiaparelli, as canals cut into the Martian surface (Blazing a trail to Mars, 97). In 1922, Guglielmo Marconi used a radio receiver aboard his private yacht to listen for broadcasts from Mars (Shostak, 1995, 1). The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has widened considerably since then. Recent disclosures by NASA that meteorite fragments found at the Antarctic are Martian in origin and contain the residue of life based chemicals gives credence to the search for life elsewhere in the universe (Blazing a trail to Mars, 1996, p 97).

In the most general of terms, optical and radio astronomy represent the broadest areas of research in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Other methods involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence are based on more refined techniques within these two areas. In essence the search for extraterrestrial intelligence centers on planetary discoveries and scanning the electromagnetic spectrum for nonrandom repeating signals.

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e Megachannel ExtraTerrestrial Assay, since 1985. META I searches the northern skies using a 26 meter diameter antenna located at Oal Ridge, Maine. Meta II scans the southern skies, from the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy, using a 30 foot antenna (Thurber, 1995, 7). Optical Astronomy Optical astronomy is also in the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence. Albeit no astronomer is likely to view explicit evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. What is being looked for, using various techniques of optical observation, is indirect evidence of planetary bodies. The very possibility that other planetary systems can exist lends credibility to the search for other intelligences. Astronomers have learned to use slight differences in measurement as an ally to locate likely planetary bodies. For example, by observing how a star's light is changed by its movements toward or away from the Earth, observers have actually found planets. Such observations are possible because each time a star moves towards or away from a point of observation, the color of its light shifts slightly. This effect known as Doppler shift cues astronomers and physicists into the possibility that a sizable mass is circling a particular star, cau
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Approximate Word count = 2678
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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