Jill Tarter and the Allen Telescope Array

An anonymous reader writes "Today's interview with Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute (and Carl Sagan's inspiration for the main character of his novel Contact), outlines the forthcoming search capabilities of the large Allen Telescope Array. Their thousand-fold expanded search must find promising places to point 350 radio dishes. Outside San Francisco, the array spans an equivalent 8 football fields. Their new catalog, called HabCat, identifies all potentially habitable hosts for complex life within 450 light-years from Earth. Of the billions of places to point in the sky, their A-list total: 17,129. Start at Vega."

Comments

Allen Telescope Array

[Anonymous Coward]

hehehe... I just read it as "Alien Transport Array".

Damn... Too much coffee....

In some ways, the catalog is a waste of time.

[Anonymous Coward]

The guesses at inhabitable worlds sure fits in with assumptions of Trekkies. It assumes that other life on other planets would be humanlike and thus need a similar environment.

The usefulness of looking for Earthlike worlds to find life is marginal at best: it is based on generalizations from a sample set of one. Yes, just one.

I would guess that if we ever find "life" out there, it is going to be like nothing we expected in a place we never expected it. But that is just my guess, as after all we have no idea.

Re:In some ways, the catalog is a waste of time.

[drgroove]

The guesses at inhabitable worlds sure fits in with assumptions of Trekkies. It assumes that other life on other planets would be humanlike and thus need a similar environment.

The only differences being that, while human like, the aliens have blue skin and green afros. Oh, and if we were to visit the surface of their world, the lowest-ranking member of the party would always be turned into a rock, or eaten by a giant alien squid, or killed in hand-to-hand combat with their greatest warrior.

Re:In some ways, the catalog is a waste of time.

[Glock27]

It assumes that other life on other planets would be humanlike and thus need a similar environment.

There is more to it than that. Biochemists have done substantial analysis regarding what other chemical families might support life. It looks as though with the periodic table as it is, carbon is the only good choice for rich biochemistry. For carbon life to develop, liquid water appears necessary. So, you have narrowed the search volume considerably by only considering stars that would likely have a planet in the "liquid water" sweet spot, while not getting fried by hard radiation at the same time.

Further, a planet must exist long enough for evolution to occur. That eliminates a great number of stars as well - many just don't last long enough.

As another poster pointed out, that at least provides a starting point on where to look.

Re:Whats with the measurements??

[fgb]

1 parsec = 3.26 light years

Rights Violations?

[blind_abraxas]

If someone discovers that there are rebroadcasts of 40's baseball games with encoded secret plans,
will the DMCA sue the aliens for rights violations? Shut E.T. down, Napster-style?

Re:Whats with the measurements??

[richie2000]

Easy. A light year is like a leap year, except we set it on fire to light up the place a bit. A parsec is a fast-paced multiplayer cross-platform 3D Internet space combat game.

Or, it could be that a light year is the distance that a photon would travel on a standard solar year, in vacuum, while a parsec is the distance from which the radius of the earth's orbit would subtend an angle of one second of arc. One parsec is roughly 3.26168 light years.

Google is mother, Google is father. Worship Google.

Re:Whats with the measurements??

[vofka]

One Parsec = 3.26 Light Years.

More technically, One parsec is the distance at which one astronomical unit subtends one second of arc.

See: This Site for a definition of the Parsec.
See: This Site for a definition of the Light Year

All this effort is going on the wrong planet

[bcollier06]

Wouldn't it be much more likely that a society advanced enough to be detectable across the vast reaches of interstellar space would find humans based upon primitive radio frequency transmissions? We might be able to just kick back and hope for our sake they don't take any of those hitler or vietnam broadcasts too seriously...

While the possibility of extra-terrestrial life is a fascinating one, aren't there a lot more equally fascinating yet infinitely more practical aspects of space exploration to spend tons of money on?

Re:Whats with the measurements??

[papadiablo]

First off, we have gotten past our moon with our manless space exploration.

Secondly, just because we discover a signal coming from a planet 450 light years away doesn't mean we have to go there. The knowledge contained in that signal would be enough to warrant such cataloging. If that civilization is anything like ours, they might think to broadcast an "encyclopedia galactica" like Brian McConnell suggests in his book Beyond Contact.

Not the inspiration for Contact...

[DShard]

is what she said in an interview in discover magazine. I can't remember which month but it was some time recently. She said she had asked Carl about this and he said the inspiration was himself.

Re:Not the inspiration for Contact...

[kevlar]

Authors routinely deny claims like this because they are afraid of being sued.

Re:Not the inspiration for Contact...

[SETIGuy]

He also said I wasn't the inspiration for "Scientist with Bad Haircut #3" but the resemblance (especially in Jill's case) must be more than coincidental.

Allen Telescope Array?

[deander2]

Am I the only one who read that as "Alien Telescope Array"? :P

I need more cafffeeeeeeennee...

Re:Wow Signal.

[richie2000]

This article was linked from the article in the post.

Excerpt:

In the October 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, Gray and Simon Ellingsen, of Australia's University of Tasmania, report on new observations (partially supported by the SETI Institute) designed to test this idea. Their new try was made at the 26-meter radio telescope in Hobart, Tasmania. This southern hemisphere instrument could continuously follow for most of a day the patch of sky (in the constellation of Sagittarius) where the "Big Ear" was pointing when it found the 'Wow' signal. They made six 14-hour observations, and even though their telescope was rather smaller than the venerable Ohio State antenna, they still had sufficient sensitivity to find signals only 5% as strong as Wow's 1977 intensity. They also covered five times as much of the radio dial as the original "Big Ear" telescope.

Bottom line? No dice. To quote from their article, "no signals resembling the Ohio State Wow were detected..." Of course, if the signal's repetition cycle were much longer than 14 hours, then even this careful experiment could have easily missed it. But as Gray and Ellingsen point out, if the signal were really this infrequent, then the chance to have found it in the first place was very slim.

So was the Wow signal our first detection of extraterrestrials? It might have been, but no scientist would make such a claim. Scientific experiment is inherently, and rightly, skeptical. This isn't just a sour attitude; it's the only way to avoid routinely fooling yourself. So until and unless the cosmic beep measured in Ohio is found again, the Wow signal will remain a What signal.

Re:Named for Microsoft founder Paul Allen...

[.@.]

You're joking, of course. However, before someone makes some MS-bashing comment, the system the SETI Institute will deploy at the ATA runs mostly on Linux. Debian, at the moment. What isn't Linux is Solaris, and that's mainly the control and data archiving system.

Divine Intervention

[kevlar]

Would you consider yourself a determined believer that extra-terrestrials exist? If (for the sake of discussion) you were to determine that we were, without a doubt the only life in the Universe, how would that impact any religious beliefs you may hold?

I personally believe that if we were to be the only life in the Universe that this would be divine intervention simply because of the statistics, would you agree?

Re:Divine Intervention

[CaffeineAddict2001]

No, it just tells us the old way of calculating the probability of life is wrong.

It's very unlikely that today I will run into 13 eskimo amputee clowns at McDonalds.

But suppose I do, which is more likely:
1) This is the work of god.
or
2) Eskimo amputee clowns arn't as rare as I had previously thought.

Re:how now brown cow

[.@.]

SETI@Home and the SETI Institute are two separate efforts.

Re:Looking at the tools...

[vofka]

Have a look at This Introduction to Very Long Baseline Interferometry at the Jodrell Bank Obervatory website - that will tell you (almost) everything you ever wanted to know about VLBI, and then some!!

Cool article, cool web page

[Omega1045]

While I am a huge SETI fan, I immediately noticed the menu system at the top of the Astrobiology Magazine website. It gives the user of the site the ability to email the story, fax it, download it in Word, Acrobat or PalmDoc, or make it printer friendly. Among other options, it also will translate to Spanish, and read the article to you in MP3.

A lot of work, I think kudos should be given to the web dev team that put this site together. Very cool site!

What else would you suggest?

[robinw]

Actually, there are more assumptions made than that. They are assuming that the lifeforms have developed radio technology as a form of communication, which could also be seen as an evolution of the ears/mouth that we have.

Really, though, what it comes down to is this - the universe is REALLY, REALLY, REALLY big. And the amount of time they have to scan it is REALLY, REALLY, REALLY small. So what they're doing is deciding which planets to scan first. Since we have no idea what other platforms that life could have evolved on, the safest bet is to use that short amount of time is to scan those which are similar to our own. The idea being that we DO know what kind of variables were able to sustain life here.

In the future, I think you'll see they'll expand their searching, as technology improves and our understanding increases.

Re:Looking at the tools...

[zer0vector]

Each measure is important in its own way. Large baselines give you greater resolution, or the ability to distinguish between objects that are very close together. Collecting area gives you greater sensitivity, or the ability to image fainter and farther objects. These apply to all wavelengths, from the radio up through x-ray.

ATA search capabilities

[Pop n' Fresh]

"Today's interview with Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute (and Carl Sagan's inspiration for the main character of his novel Contact), outlines the forthcoming search capabilities of the large Allen Telescope Array.

It's going to take them forever using ATA, wouldn't SCSI be able to handle many more simultaneous searches?

Turn off that light!

[paiute]

After the events of the last few months, I am not so sure I want to be visited by an alien civilization - which is sure to have radically different notions of what behavior is justifiable - and that is sure to have unimaginable military superiority - and upon whom we can make no demands but have to accept their definition and conditions of our relationship.

Why do it?

[PineHall]

I find the fascination with Extra-Terrestrials quite interesting. Is there some need for us to seek for someone outside of ourselves? Has the search for God been replaced by the search for ET? Are we looking for a God replacement?

The reason I bring this up is that there is a very remote chance that an ET signal will ever be found and an even more remote chance that we will be able to communicate with them (impossible in the foreseeable future). So why spend money when the odds are so very low? What is this fascination?

Re:Why do it?

[sigep_ohio]

why do billions of people around the world believe in God? and give lots of money to their churchs/mosques/sinagogs(sp?)? belief in something greater than themselves. it is a need that lots of people seem to have. no one wants to think that we are alone. so if not god, then ET is who you look for.

it all boils down to thinking that humans are special, and why are we special. if you are in the God camp, then most likely you think humans are unique in all the universe. the ET camp says we are not unique, but that we have brothers in space on distant worlds.

as for the remote chance, well it is a remote chance that you will win the lottery, but people still play. a remote chance that you will get SARS, but people are still up in a panic. for many the odds don't matter, it is the possibilities that do.

Re:Why do it?

[mysticgoat]

I find the fascination with Extra-Terrestrials quite interesting. Is there some need for us to seek for someone outside of ourselves? Has the search for God been replaced by the search for ET? Are we looking for a God replacement?

I can only answer for myself, of course:

1. Not a need in my case, but a desire that is stronger than the urge to purchase lottery tickets. See below.
2. No, I continue to seek the gods as well as having an interest in seeking ET sentience. Obtaining a positive answer for one would probably have an impact on how I do the other, but at this point I do not see them as related endeavors. Certainly not as mutually exclusive pursuits.
3. No, I wouldn't regard any other form of carbon/water based life as being a god substitute. Nor do I regard SETI's activities to be some kind of replacement for spiritual explorations.

The reason I bring this up is that there is a very remote chance that an ET signal will ever be found and an even more remote chance that we will be able to communicate with them (impossible in the foreseeable future). So why spend money when the odds are so very low? What is this fascination?

Agreed: the chances of SETI's success are very small. And the chance of finding that signal would be even more remote if nobody looks for it.

As you suggest, the meat of the issue is a budgetary problem. If SETI is successful, reception of that first message would have as much impact on science, art, and religion as the Copernican revolution. It would be like winning the lottery, but bigger. So how cheap does the lottery ticket need to be before it makes sense to buy one every month? I think SETI is cheap enough to budget for.

But SETI is unlike the lottery in one important way: if signals are not found in a reasonable length of time, that will tell me something useful. For instance, if the NASA Manned Mars Mission Proposal includes US$1 billion to develop a death ray to deal with inimical aliens, I would use SETI's negative findings to argue against such a pork barrel.

Vegans

[SecretAsianMan]

...at least we don't have to worry about them wanting to eat us!