|
SETI Projects
Several SETI projects have been conducted since 1960. Some of the major
ones are:
- Project Ozma - The first SETI search, conducted by astronomer Frank Drake in 1960
- Ohio State Big Ear SETI Project - Launched in 1973, detected a brief but unconfirmed signal called the WOW! signal
in 1977 and was shut down in 1997 to make way for a golf course
- Project SERENDIP - Launched by the University of California at Berkeley in 1979
- NASA HRMS (High-resolution Microwave Survey) - Launched by NASA in 1982 and discontinued in 1993 when the U.S.
Congress cut its funding
- Project META (Mega-channel Extraterrestrial Assay) - Launched at Harvard University in 1985 to search 8.4 million
0.5-Hz channels
- COSETI (Columbus Optical SETI) - Launched in 1990 as the first optical SETI search for laser signals from ET
- Project BETA (Billion-channel Extraterrestrial Assay) - Launched at Harvard University in 1995 to search billions
of channels
- Project Phoenix - Launched in 1995, SETI Institute's continuation of the NASA SETI effort
- Project Argus - Launched in 1996, SETI League's all-sky survey project
- Southern SERENDIP - Launched in Australia in 1998, piggyback project to search the southern sky
- SETI@home - Available as of 1999, screensaver program for analyzing SETI data using home computers
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
If a signal is detected, there are a series of steps that follow to confirm that the signal is extraterrestrial:
- The radio telescope is moved off the target (off-axis) -- the signal should go away, and it should return when the telescope
is pointed back to the target. This confirms that the signal is coming from the telescope's field of view.
- Known Earth or near-Earth sources, such as satellites, must be ruled out as originators of the signal.
- Known natural extraterrestrial sources, such as pulsars and quasars, must be ruled out.
- The signal must be confirmed by another radio telescope, preferably one on a different continent.
|
