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Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence

The Search for ExtraTerrestrial 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.

Optical and radio astronomy can be Earth-based or space-based. Radio astronomy is being increasingly used as methods become more finely tuned. The search for extraterrestrial life within the planets of our own solar system is accelerating after a twenty year lapse, and discoveries of extraplanetary systems located hundreds of light years away has fired the popular imagination (Blazing a trail to Mars, 1996, 97).

Looking for intelligent life outside of Earth's fra...

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Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:25, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1691849.html