On the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence

I have always had an interest in radio. I became a licensed Radio Amateur at the age of 15, which involved going to night school and passing an exam – which, for someone who did not do well in exams, was quite an achievement. And finding books from the author Isaac Asimov with stories of robots was my Harry Potter – books you cannot put down. I still remember the three laws of robotics. What’s great about getting older is you see science fiction becoming science fact, and that is so exciting. Anyway: enough talking about robots, this is meant to be about aliens maybe hundreds of light years away using radio and us trying to pick up their signals and find the answer to the question ‘Are we alone?’.

In the year I was born, Jocelyn Bell – a graduate student at Cambridge using a powerful radio telescope – detected an unexplained signal that was labelled LGM, standing for Little Green Men. This turned out not to be aliens but was, in fact, the first time a Pulsar (rapidly rotating neutron star) had been detected. In 1977 Astronomer Jerry R Ehman, looking at a printout from the Big Ears radio telescope at Ohio State University, spotted what seemed a very interesting signal and wrote the word  ‘Wow!’ in red pen.  This has captured the public’s imagination and is still being talked about today and the process of proving and disproving leads to amazing scientific discoveries. No one  coming at this from a scientific view point today thinks the Wow! Signal is aliens.

On Columbus Day in 1992, NASA initiated a formal, more intensive SETI program (the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence). Less than a year later, however, Congress cancelled the program. This work is now be done by Breakthrough Listen who has $100 million dollars of funding. It was launched by Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner in 2015 – and I don’t need to tell you how I follow what they are up to with great interest. I was reading about how they may look for alien lasers used to communicate between planets, and then I remembered NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) – an international array of giant radio antennas – is looking at a laser upgrade for higher data speeds. As part of their Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment, they sent, of course, a video of a cat chasing a laser. Taters the cat stayed on Earth but the video was sent back from a spacecraft 19 million miles away using a laser beam, if you want to watch HD cat videos when 19 million miles away best to do it by laser for faster data speeds.

All this technology and my mobile phone still does not work when I am at home. I wish my mobile phone provider would put up a new mobile phone mast in South Woodham Ferrers for a better signal. One place you cannot get a phone signal is on the moon – well the good news is this is getting fixed by the end of this year, NASA is partnering with Nokia to establishing a 4G LTE network on the moon, to support the Artemis programme with its long term mission for humans to return to the moon by 2026. This new moon mast will not give you a better signal on earth, but will allow rovers to carry out experiments and stay connected to Nasa. It could be that when humans return to the Moon they will be able to call each other on their smart phones and as the network expands you will be able to call back to earth. See Nokia’s video for the lunar 4G LTE network, link at the end of this article.

So do I believe in aliens? You bet – as soon as the smart guys at NASA/SETI and Breakthrough Listen pick up an alien signal and prove it to me with science.

Writing this blog I hope to show the importance of good sources and that science and the truth is something we must all hold onto if we don’t want to be taken to a fool’s paradise. Planets and space are great but we should take time to care about this planet we call home. The first step is to understand what is coming down the track in the next few years and being ready for extremes in weather and start caring about the future for our children and our children’s children and the future generations to come. I get to read a lot about climate change but doing research for this blog and looking at good sourced data journalism, I was taken aback and once I watch the video from Professor Dr Johan Rockström my reaction was why haven’t they told us this and what is being done to fix it! Please find the time to watch The Tipping Points of Climate Change — and Where We Stand.

With all my talk of space and the search for distant radio signals from other worlds, you can see you do not need to be a scientist to be smart enough to listen to one. Professor Dr Johan Rockström is Professor in Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam. Give him 18 minutes and watch why he says scientists are getting ‘seriously nervous’.

I have the right to keep asking questions and do my own research from good sources but I also have the responsibility to not be stupid and fake stories about us not landing on the moon or climate change is not real just don’t stake up. When it comes to studying planets Nasa are the experts and I cannot imagine them saying we have had enough of experts or we are going to look at this using  “ Alternative Facts” I have spent some time looking at Climate Change – NASA Science and can see all the work Nasa is doing to study Planet Earth and it is very picture based and even has a time machine, so you can see Climate changes over time. You can get a bit sucked in and the time flies by as you use this fantastic learning resource giving you real science on why urgent action is needed now.

‘The Truth IS Out There’ – when we use good sources for information and are careful not to listen to all the fake stories on social media giving bad science, encouraging hate and conspiracy theories.

I hope you will listen to this song that fits this blog: The Struts, Robbie Williams – Strange Days feat. Robbie Williams (Official Video)

 

Terry’s out-there list of links if you want to check out more stuff…

Nasa about the history of Seti – the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.  www.nasa.gov/history/nasa-and-seti/

Cat video beamed 19 million miles by laser.
https://youtu.be/fWa7WWA8YsE

People always say loudly “I’m on the train”, how about “hello hello I’m on the Moon”?
Working with NASA and Intuitive Machines to put an LTE network on the moon (youtube.com)

“Climate change is one of the most complex issues facing us today” – Read what Nasa have to say
Mitigation and Adaptation – NASA Science

Cllr Terry Sherlock