New Giant Telescope to Join the Hunt for Alien Life – In the search for extraterrestrial life, scientists are about to get a major boost. Slated to begin construction in 2018, the Square Kilometer Array will scan the stars, hunting for the radio signals of distant civilizations. Since the early 20th century, mankind has communicated massive amounts of data through wireless transmissions. Radio programs, television shows, military radar signals have all traveled across the globe.
But those signals donโt stop at our atmosphere. Boundless, they travel out into the universe at the speed of light.
Meaning, theoretically, that Plutonian squid monsters could be watching our old reruns of “Two and a Half Men.”
But it works both ways. Working on the assumption that any advanced civilization will inevitably develop radio technology, scientists with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) have been combing the skies, looking for signs.
“A unique aspect for the search of life in the universe is the question of whether advanced life evolves intelligence,” Andrew Siemion, with the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, said during the Astrobiology Science Conference in June.
“The only way to answer that in the foreseeable future is to look directly for evidence,” he added. “For that, you need a large telescope.”
And a large telescope is exactly what SETI researchers are about to get. With plans for construction in both Australia and South Africa, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) has been funded by a number of different countries and will be comprised of thousands of small antennae.
Massive radio telescopes already exist for such purposes. The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, for example, is the worldโs largest, stretching 1,000 feet across the jungle. In addition to SETI research, itโs used for a number of purposes, including atmospheric science and radar astronomy.
A group of international financial terrorists even use the observatory to control an electromagnetic pulse satellite in 1995โs “Goldeneye.” In real life, however, the dish is not camouflaged by an artificial lake. Sorry.
While the SKA would be composed of thousands of small antennae, taken as a whole, they would be significantly larger than the Arecibo Observatory. This will allow scientists to detect even fainter signals.
How faint? In theory, SKA could pick up a signal equivalent to an aircraftโs radar within a range of 200 light-years.
A Galactic Goose Chase?
While many are excited about SKAโs prospects, the project isnโt without criticism. For one, some are skeptical about the idea of spending such vast amounts of money on a telescope when similar devices already exist. Though the search for extraterrestrial life is only one of SKA’s objectives, SETI itself strikes some as a fruitless pursuit. If we truly are alone, their reasoning goes, it seems wasteful to endlessly pump millions into a search that looks for signs it will simply never find.
Weโve been searching for 30 years, after all, with little to show for it.
But thereโs also another problem. If we look at humanity as a model โ and really, what other alternative do we have โ radio wave technology is little more than a century old and is already being phased out in favor of new, digital technology. Aliens may enjoy old episodes of “The Honeymooners” from network television, but theyโre going to have a harder time picking up the latest season of “True Detective” โ not that theyโre missing much.
If alien civilizations follow a similar trajectory, then artificially created radio waves could have a relatively minor presence in the universe. Still, thatโs not deterring SETI researchers. While SKA will certainly search for the kind of random signals which would emanate from alien broadcasts, theyโre also hoping to detect something a little more focused: transplanetary communications.
Itโs possible that if extraterrestrial societies exist that would spread beyond their host planet. Just as NASA is developing plans to colonize Mars, distant civilizations could also spread throughout their own solar system. In that event, the best way to communicate between planets would still be via wireless radio waves.
Intentionally focused out into space, those waves would be even easier to detect, especially for an instrument as sensitive as SKA.
Itโs certainly possible that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence will never bear fruit. Itโs hard to imagine that weโre alone in the massive depths of the universe, but until we find at least one other instance of life, we donโt really have enough data to make any estimates. Itโs also possible that even if life exists elsewhere, it may not overlap with our own.
In the thirty years of scanning the stars, have scientists found any promising signs? One.
In 1977, a scientist working with the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University caught a strange signal emanating from the constellation Sagittarius. Lasting 72 seconds, the signal bore all the signs of having a non-traditional, none-Solar System origin. Itโs now commonly referred to as the “Wow! Signal,” as it surprised its discoverer so much that he circled the data on a printout, writing “Wow!” in the margins. Despite many attempts, that signal has never been detected since, and scientists still have no explanation for it.
