Looking For Signs Of Alien Existence

While SETI, The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has been operating on what we would have to called a shoe string, it is still a heck of a lot of money to us mortals. We have been told they are looking for signals which might be coming from alien civilizations. The way they do this is to use radio telescopes, among other things. Their criteria for stating something is an extraterrestrial signal is once one is detected, the radio telescope will be slewed away from the signal and then returned to the same spot and if the signal is still being received it can be considered extraterrestrial if it meets the requirements. SETI admits to only coming close one time and that is when it received a signal which could be considered extraterrestrial, but they couldn’t reacquire it again after they slewed the telescope on its axis. The signal became famous as the “WOW” signal, because an astronomer who was examining the printout of the signal wrote “WOW” next to it. That signal was recorded in a narrow radio band by Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977. The signal lasted for 72 seconds. It was received at the Big Ear radio telescope of the Ohio State University which is located at Ohio Wesleyan University’s Perkins Observatory in Delaware, Ohio.

Many UFO investigators believe SETI knows more than it is talking about. It is only natural they would think this since there are so many UFOs being sighted in our skies. There is a chance however that if UFOs are piloted by aliens they may be using some form of communication which doesn’t involve radio waves. Think about it, a radio wave can only travel at the speed of light, which is not very efficient for long distance communication. There is a chance aliens might have figured out how to speed up radio waves and we don’t know it, or does it make more sense they are using something else? They might be using something which uses instant communication due to what Einstein called spooky action at a distance. We have been told by some investigators and former government employees there are many different alien races, so if this is true there is still a chance some could be using radio signals. SETI has also been peering into some optical wavelengths in case communication is taking place there.

The 1977 the “WOW” signal was not the only major event at SETI. Another signal which could be extraterrestrial was picked up in 2010. The signal was said to be coming from a star system. The star is called TYC 1220-91-1. The star is very similar to our sun, but is estimated to be a bit older. It is about 100 light years from us. The signal had the signs of being a beacon, but it was only recorded for about 10 seconds. It has been mentioned that SETI has been tuning to something it calls the magic frequency. It has been said the Arecibo radio telescope can be detected from about 100 light years away and what we might have detected is a powerful radio telescope watching us which was trying to detect our radio signals. If this is true their signal would have been at least 100 years old when we detected it, so they would probably be much more advanced by now.

One can only conclude that Dr. Stephen Hawking thinks there might be aliens who have at least advanced to about where we are today if not much further. I say this because he announced there would be a new 100 million dollar program within the next decade dedicated to tracking down alien signals. The funding is going to come from billionaire Yuri Milner and will be named “Breakthrough Listen.” I have become very jaded over the years and because of this I can’t help but think programs like this lend themselves to being influenced by the government and used in ways they were never intended to be used. Assuming this doesn’t happen and the project will be used for what it was intended, then there is a chance it might succeed. One of the things I have always thought was wrong was the way we compare the progress of civilizations based on where we are in our technological evolution. If we look at man using the standard approach, we had a lot of wasted time in our evolution where nothing changed. Even when we got to the point of innovation many times we never followed through with inventions which would have advanced our technology. Take the steam engine for example. The ancient Greeks invented the steam engine, but no one pursued it for the next 1,500 years or so. The same is true for the Antikythera mechanism which was a 2,000 years old mechanical computer. Just think where we would be today if humans would have used these two invention to improve their technological advancement.

There could be other races much younger than ours which are far more advanced, because they didn’t have Dark Ages and such. There is also another point I would like to make and it is other races might not have gone down the same path we did. We think inventions flow in a certain way. First there were stone tools, then crude metal, more refined metals, machines, and electronics. What is some race somehow avoided some of these steps, such as using stone tools for 700,000 years or more and only used them for 50,000 years and then jumped to the next step or even skipped it? It would be hard to imagine where they would be technologically if they had been around as long as we were.

We are no longer going to put the most emphasis on trying to detect intelligence by just listening for signals. Scientists have decided to use an infrared detection instrument called NIROSETI. It is located at California’s Lick Observatory. There is a suspicion aliens might be using infrared beacons and this instrument may be powerful enough to detect some of them.Β  An assistant Professor of Physics has stated, “Infrared light would be an excellent means of interstellar communication.” I would think we are severely handicapped by not knowing anyway to communicate faster than the speed of light, so saying this is excellent, may not mean it is excellent at all.

Will we eventually find an alien communication and will it happen before we finally meet aliens? This is the big question and we may be finding out the answer in the not too distant future.