The Daily Galaxy: Great Discoveries Channel

SETI Chief Astronomer: "Humans Predicted to Make Contact with an Extraterrestrial Civilization Within Two Decades"--A Galaxy Classic

"That's 500 billion planets out there, and bear in mind there are 100 billion other galaxies. To think this [the Earth] is the only place where anything interesting is happening, you have got to be really audacious to take that point of view."

Seth Shostak, SETI senior astronomer

 

Zooming In On the Best Shot at ET Contact

"If those civilizations are out there – and we don't know that they are – those that inhabit star systems that lie close to the plane of the Earth's orbit around the sun will be the most motivated to send communications signals toward Earth, because those civilizations will surely have detected our annual transit across the face of the sun, telling them that Earth lies in a habitable zone, where liquid water is stable," says Richard Conn Henry, of Johns Hopkins University. "Through spectroscopic analysis of our atmosphere, they will know that Earth likely bears life. Knowing where to look tremendously reduces the amount of radio telescope time we will need to conduct the search.”

Vatican's Chief Astronomer -Advanced Extraterrestrial Life Not An Accident

The Vatican's chief astronomer says there is no conflict between believing in God and in the possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations perhaps more evolved than humans.

"In my opinion this possibility exists," said the Reverend José Gabriel Funes, head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict XVI, referring to life on other planets.

Jupiter's Europa -The Water Moon

Russia's Millimetron Space Observatory -The Search for Astro-engineering in the Universe

Russia has a new space mission in preparation that can be used for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The project Millimetron is a millimeter and sub-millimeter space observatory with a 10 meter diameter mirror, very sensitive receivers for single dish mode and will be used for orbiting VLBI (Very Long Base Interferometer). This telescope would be convenient for a very sensitive all sky survey with the possibility of constructing images of sources with a very high angular resolution. The mission will be useful for the search for astro-engineering constructions in the universe.

The Great Silence -Are We the Miss Lonely Hearts of the Milky Way?

Dennis Overbye, author of Lonely Hearts of he Cosmos wrote a brilliant essay about the probability of discovering intelligent, advanced technological civilization in our Galaxy. Overbye quoted Francis Drake, father of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial life, who says that to hear from ET we would "need to look at 10 million stars (there are 200 billion in our galaxy) and there is not enough time left."

New Discovery Shows Water Abundant in Early Universe

Water vapor is thought to exist in clouds of dust and gas that feed the supermassive black hole at the center of an ancient quasar 11.1 billion years distant from Earth. The detection was later confirmed by high-resolution interferometric observations with the Expanded Very Large Array.

NASA Scientists Ask: Is Life Possibile on Saturn's Moon, Enceladus?

NASA scientists are exploring the possibility that microbial life exist inside Enceladus, where no sunlight reaches, photosynthesis is impossible and no oxygen is available.

Space Lasers Created to Detect Earth-like Planets

A new laser system should make it possible to detect potentially habitable Earth-like planets for the first time by watching for their effects on the light produced by the stars they orbit.

Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have adapted a relatively young laser technology to discern the once undetectably faint gravitational influence a rocky, Earth-like planet revolving around a Sun-like star exerts on their home stars' light output.

Could Advanced Technological Civilizations Exist at the Edge of the Milky Way? -A Galaxy Classic

Milan Cirkovic  of the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade, and one of the world's leading authorities on astrobiology and SETI studies, thinks they might.

Cirkovic's approach is similar to the one favored by Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, who suggests searching for distant extrterrestrial artifacts of the Solar System (and other planetary systems).

SETI Chief Astronomer: "Humans Predicted to Make Contact with an Extraterrestrial Civilization Within Two Decades"--A Galaxy Classic

"That's 500 billion planets out there, and bear in mind there are 100 billion other galaxies. To think this [the Earth] is the only place where anything interesting is happening, you have got to be really audacious to take that point of view."

Seth Shostak, SETI senior astronomer

 

Zooming In On the Best Shot at ET Contact

"If those civilizations are out there – and we don't know that they are – those that inhabit star systems that lie close to the plane of the Earth's orbit around the sun will be the most motivated to send communications signals toward Earth, because those civilizations will surely have detected our annual transit across the face of the sun, telling them that Earth lies in a habitable zone, where liquid water is stable," says Richard Conn Henry, of Johns Hopkins University. "Through spectroscopic analysis of our atmosphere, they will know that Earth likely bears life. Knowing where to look tremendously reduces the amount of radio telescope time we will need to conduct the search.”

Vatican's Chief Astronomer -Advanced Extraterrestrial Life Not An Accident

The Vatican's chief astronomer says there is no conflict between believing in God and in the possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations perhaps more evolved than humans.

"In my opinion this possibility exists," said the Reverend José Gabriel Funes, head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict XVI, referring to life on other planets.

Jupiter's Europa -The Water Moon

Russia's Millimetron Space Observatory -The Search for Astro-engineering in the Universe

Russia has a new space mission in preparation that can be used for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The project Millimetron is a millimeter and sub-millimeter space observatory with a 10 meter diameter mirror, very sensitive receivers for single dish mode and will be used for orbiting VLBI (Very Long Base Interferometer). This telescope would be convenient for a very sensitive all sky survey with the possibility of constructing images of sources with a very high angular resolution. The mission will be useful for the search for astro-engineering constructions in the universe.

The Great Silence -Are We the Miss Lonely Hearts of the Milky Way?

Dennis Overbye, author of Lonely Hearts of he Cosmos wrote a brilliant essay about the probability of discovering intelligent, advanced technological civilization in our Galaxy. Overbye quoted Francis Drake, father of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial life, who says that to hear from ET we would "need to look at 10 million stars (there are 200 billion in our galaxy) and there is not enough time left."

New Discovery Shows Water Abundant in Early Universe

Water vapor is thought to exist in clouds of dust and gas that feed the supermassive black hole at the center of an ancient quasar 11.1 billion years distant from Earth. The detection was later confirmed by high-resolution interferometric observations with the Expanded Very Large Array.

NASA Scientists Ask: Is Life Possibile on Saturn's Moon, Enceladus?

NASA scientists are exploring the possibility that microbial life exist inside Enceladus, where no sunlight reaches, photosynthesis is impossible and no oxygen is available.

Space Lasers Created to Detect Earth-like Planets

A new laser system should make it possible to detect potentially habitable Earth-like planets for the first time by watching for their effects on the light produced by the stars they orbit.

Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have adapted a relatively young laser technology to discern the once undetectably faint gravitational influence a rocky, Earth-like planet revolving around a Sun-like star exerts on their home stars' light output.

Could Advanced Technological Civilizations Exist at the Edge of the Milky Way? -A Galaxy Classic

Milan Cirkovic  of the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade, and one of the world's leading authorities on astrobiology and SETI studies, thinks they might.

Cirkovic's approach is similar to the one favored by Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, who suggests searching for distant extrterrestrial artifacts of the Solar System (and other planetary systems).