A gigantic radio telescope in Virginia has started listening to 86 Earth-like planet candidates identified by the Kepler Space Telescope, hoping to hear signs of alien life. Astronomers aren’t even sure the stars to which they are listening actually harbor planets, let alone radio-communicating extraterrestrials, but hey, we might as well bend an ear, right?
The SETI Institute is looking at Earth-like (rocky) planets with a focus on those with temperatures between 0 and 100 °C (32° and 212 °F), where liquid water can exist. As far as our Earth-biased science can tell us, that’s a crucial ingredient for life.
SETI has been listening to parts of the sky for decades, but pointing directly at Kepler findings stands among the project’s best-informed attempts yet. The Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico looks at stars like the sun, hoping they might have planets around them.“But we’ve never had a list of planets like this before,” said physicist Dan Werthimer, director of the SETI project at Arecibo, in an interview with AFP.
In February, Kepler scientists announced they had found 1,235 potential planets orbiting sun-like stars in the Milky Way, including 68 approximately Earth-size and 288 super-Earth-size. Scientists have been verifying and refining the measurements in the months since.
The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope will gather 24 hours of data on each of 86 planets identified this spring by the Kepler space telescope science team as potential Earth-like planets in “Goldilocks” orbits, where conditions are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water.
SETI has its own telescopes, too, but apparently they’ve gone dark for a lack of funding, according to the AFP — SETI announced last month it was shutting down its 42-dish Allen Telescope Array because of a budget shortfall, AFP reports. While the 4-year-old, $50 million project is on hiatus, the Green Bank telescope will assume its responsibilities.
While Arecibo will also keep listening, Green Bank can hear a lot more — it scans 300 times the range of frequencies that Arecibo can, so it can collect as much data in one day as Arecibo could in one year.
The Kepler listening project will take about a year, AFP reports. SETI@home users will help crunch the data; the program uses small bits of unused processing power from idle Internet-connected computers to run calculations. You can find out more, and sign up to help, by clicking here.
[AFP]
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What? I think SETI is over.... not sure this article is quite as timely as it might've been a month ago...
http://news.discovery.com/space/search-for-et-suspended.html
Maybe I should read the ENTIRE article before posting, sounds good to me, I apologize.
The only thing really surprising about this story is that they are just now thinking to do this. It would be the first thought that crossed my mind if I were in charge of a program that was looking for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.
Don't take life to seriously! You'll never get out of it alive.
-Elbert Hubbard
"The only thing really surprising about this story is that they are just now thinking to do this."
You are just now hearing about it =)
Does not anyone know where West Virginia is?
We earthlings have a history of war. One culture is always trying to take the resources of the other culture. It’s a ever repeating cycle. We just can't seem to quit the habit. So, one day the smarter than ourselves aliens are alerted to our wear about, they are going to send the alien space craft pickup truck and come take all they want; exploiting all they want. I guess pointing our antennas to the sky, well maybe alert ourselves to their prior coming. But, I doubt it. The end and have a nice day!
Optimistically, when the aliens arrive, they may decide to keep us humans as pets. So it's not necessary all doom and gloom. I sure to love my own puppy! :)
I sure DO love my own puppy! :)
Ms Boyle - The Robert C Byrd Green Bank Radio Telescope is in WEST VIRGINIA!
West Virginia, Virginia aren't they really the same state, I mean common, now were just nit picking aren't we? lol
i feel that using the same old satellite technology will get us no where when searching for ET. we need something better.
I could hang alot of clothes on that thing!
"You are just now hearing about it =)"
I wonder when we'll be hearing anything, if they actually found something?
The Commander of an alien spaceship has already made contact with us by making two crop circles, one of his face and the answer to Carl Sagan's message from the Arecibo radio telescope. The Commander intercepted the message six light-years out from earth, and then he teleported here.
Sagan's message said that we are carbon based. The Commander added 14 in the return message which indicated he is silicon based.
The Commander put the crop circle at around 52 degrees which has a hyperspace interpretation. A line from the center of a sphere intersects one tetrahedron at the middle of the edge of the second inverted tetrahedron. The line then intersects the sphere at 52 degrees, the latitude where all the crop circles are made in England.
Then Nostradamus made contact by providing three crop circles which when overlaid and slightly burred show his face with his bulbous nose.
It is rather easy to remote view the crop circles and talk with the aliens who make them. In one contact, the gravitational wave was detected which was a first in gravitational physics. Using the magnetic vortex wormhole generator, first contact was made with the Gray alien androids in a hyperspace co-dimension. In another contact, a fractal web of triangles had the ratio of 3.14 that was created by a woman who manages a large manufacturing plant on other side of the Pleiades. Then of course we have made contact with many of the crop circles designers.
In summary, there is no need to look out into the galaxy when the aliens live co-dimensionally here with us on Earth. The SETI program is not needed because all communication is done through the musical gateway using mental telepathy, not radio waves which are too slow.
I am so freaking sick of people saying aliens are going to come here and kill us all for our resources. There are SO MANY more resources available just floating in an asteroid belt...
...Or on moons floating around gas giants...
The ONLY reason an alien race would come here is if we get interesting... meaning we can set out into the galaxy, or somehow make a negative impact on the galactic community...
There are so MANY planets that are uninhabited, and much easier to conquer.
~S
Dear Seatelite, the aliens when the come will appreciate all the things you do in life and your intelligence greatly. You will make a excellent pet for the alien race. Do not worry. You will be taken well cared for.
yes the aliens are powerful but i doubt that they would worry about us enough to annihilate us. we are like children in the aliens eyes. we are just barely out of a stage 0 civilization.
advanced alien civilizations are levels 2 and beyond. im sure that there are other civilizations out there that are are not even on the Kardashev scale. they would be a lot more easier to conquer.
PS most alien civilizations are about peace and love not like us.
Dear JediMindset, its is absolute tradition and repeated history that the more powerful, advance culture dominates and concurs the lesser culture. I suggest you go read more history their JediMindset. A Jedi is more about fantasy. Understanding history is more about reality.
The SETI program at the Arecibo Radio Telescope received $20 million a few years ago to install more computers and continue operating.
It was then reported in Puerto Rico that the cigar spacecraft was seen hovering vertically directly over the dish of the telescope. I mean you could not get any closer, as if to say, "Oh, can you see us now?"
The reason for this tremendous influx of alien spacecraft at this time is because they are here to witness and take spectral, gravitational and dimensional change scientific measurements. They fly a grid pattern over earth and then the data points are made into a spherical hologram.
The data points indicate that we will go out of dimension on 2011 2011 (Spanish date format). In fact, we are going out of dimension already. This means that low-density hyperspace energy will permeate the earth and soften the crust. This phenomenon can be seen by the vortex of volcanic islands in the Caribbean. The hyperspace energy coming out at 19.5 degrees latitude softens the rock and the magma rises easily to the surface to form the islands. Equivalently, this is the cause of the Red Eye vortex on Jupiter at -19.5 degrees latitude. We are already seeing the softening as shown by the earthquakes around the Pacific rim. The glaciers are melting from the bottom because the magma is rising closer to the ocean floor.
The question is why do not alien planets have this problem. By building our infrastructure with a rectangular geometry, we heat the earth. Cell phone use (electromagnetic waves) heats the earth. The aliens use mental telepathy to get around this problem. The aliens do not burn fossil fuel for energy so that they do not heat the atmosphere. The aliens are naturally evolved, unlike us who create circular gravitational waves between space and hyperspace. The aliens connect their computers to the data source by optical fiber, not direct electrical connections. Thus we heat all five corners of the inverted tetrahedrons, which is the geometry of space-time, and this causes us to go out of dimension.
In conclusion, I believe that the elite people of earth will move into the underground tunnels, assemble in our reverse-engineered spacecraft, and be teleported to our underground MEPI base on Mars. The rest of us will then sink into the earth's crust (the meek will inherit the earth literally) in a manner similar to that of the Philadelphia Experiment.
@Johnny Saint: I'm the hyper spacial being putting all these ideas in your head (I also did the bible writers too, look how well that turned out!). Anyway, it's been a pretty good couple of millennia fucking with you guys, but I'm back on my meds now, and my hyper-doctors say it would be healthier to quit. Sorry, so long and thanks for all the fish.
@BubbaGump
but the "civilizations" you mention are 100% human. do you really think that a smart evil alien civilization would wait until we are at the stage we are now? with the weapons we have? why not just fight us when we were using swords and sticks? i doubt it. they look down on us and are waiting until we change our ways and become a loving species. when that happens they will show themselves. they are about love. they are past the point of hate. maybe they were once like us but another alien civilization thought them about love. and a jedi is a state of mind. not a fantasy. and most of the stuff written in the history books is BS. Use your MIND and ability to choose what you think is right. not what others do.
@JohnStClair
Please keep such psuedoscientific nonsense away from the name of Carl Sagan. He'd be ashamed his name came up in your ridiculous post.