Photo by Tama Leaver via Flickr

If, like me, you have traditionally though of SETI as an organization that searches for little green men, you'll be pleasantly surprised to learn that SETI's goals, projects and objectives have a significant impact on modern day science. "Celebrate Science" sounds like a great opportunities for families to learn more about SETI and what lies ahead.

"Celebrate Science" is a family event focused on activities for kids from 8 to 15. There will be a variety of hands on activities, such as learning more about the Institute's involvement with the Kepler mission, its ongoing search for life in space and even a solar telescope to take a close up look at what's happening on the sun!

The father of SETI and author of the Drake Equation, Dr. Frank Drake will be in attendance and Seth Shostak will be speaking about SETI and his book, "Confessions of an Alien Hunter". Moreover, this event is free to attend. More information can be learned on SETI's website.

Recently, SETI has fallen on hard times, with the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) being forced into hibernation due to lack of funds. The ATA comprises 42 telescopes in Northern California that scan for radio signals from outer space, searching for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. In response to this funding deficit, SETI recently launched SETIstars, a kickstarter to raise $200,000 to bring the ATA back online. With 17 days left, its reached nearly half its goal but could still use help. If you'd like to donate or learn more, visit SETIstars, and help SETI bring back the ATA.

Watch KQED QUEST's story for more info: SETI: The New Search for ET

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

37.7667851 -122.4125425

The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) at Hat Creek Radio
Observatory. Credit: SETI Institute

ET turns the antenna once more, this time to a small, distant, yellow sun (the one we Earthlings call Sol). Reaching for the button labeled "receive," ET is suddenly interrupted by her supervisor. The order: "Shut down; we just ran out of money." Reluctantly, ET turns off the radio dish, wondering wistfully if that little yellow sun might have been "the one"….

Disclaimer: This has been a blog dramatization. There is no actual danger to the people of Planet Earth. Do not panic….

Now turn the story around: No alien scientist with research budget constraints, but rather the operational shutdown, or "hibernation," of the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array (ATA), operated by the University of California Berkeley, due to State funding cuts.

The SETI Institute has been around a while now, pointing radio dishes at stars and listening for signals of non-natural origin. If you've seen the movie Contact (at least, the first half hour or so), you get the idea of what they do—and also how funding, or scarcity thereof, figures into their work.

Trying to detect and discriminate the radio transmissions from a civilization in another star system is a bit like trying to hear a whisper from across a noisy room, hence the need for a sensitive listening device like the ATA. The ATA is an array of radio telescopes at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in Northern California built to conduct high-resolution radio astronomy observations of cosmic events and objects, as well as to listen for the radio broadcasts of any alien civilizations that might be within hearing distance of Earth.

A couple of things make the ATA the most powerful tool in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence yet constructed. One is the collective size of radio dishes. Each dish isn't particularly large as radio telescopes go, but the plan is for as many as 350 linked dishes to make one giant radio "ear". Also, advancements in electronic and computing technologies give the ATA increased sensitivity and data processing speed .

While the question as to whether other civilizations (or life) even exist has not been answered, the ATA is capable of making the detection, particularly if such a civilization were in our stellar neighborhood…and frankly, this would be one of the greatest discoveries in all of history…

…but that's all on hold until a few million dollars of operating cash can be found.

ATA's hibernation came at a particularly unfortunate moment. As compelling as SETI's search was before, the recent discovery of over 1,200 candidate extrasolar planets (exoplanets) by NASA's Kepler mission has produced a list of highly desirable targets for the ATA. A number of the candidate worlds are of Earth-like stature, and a number of those dwell within their stars' habitable zones—potentially prime spots for life to have formed…and who knows, intelligence?

Should we actually hear the weak radio (or television!) signal of an extraterrestrial world—either inadvertent signal leakage, like ET's version of I Love Lucy, or a direct broadcast aimed at the cosmos with a message like "Hello out there!"—that would be a transformational day for the human race, the day we learn that there's not only life out there, but other intelligence, other thinkers. That would be a far bigger deal than discovering microbes on Mars….

So what would we hear? What would ET say? Would we be able to understand the language spoken? Would the discovery be any less monumental if we couldn't?

What we would hear from ET might be similar to what we'd say to her. Beyond the accidental leakage of our radio and television broadcasts, what would our message be? Hello, here we are. Anyone out there? Eh? Bueller? Bueller? But the nature of interstellar distances means we'd have to wait tens, or hundreds, or even thousands of years to hear any response to the query. It makes more practical sense just to listen….

As for ET hearing our own broadcasts, in the time since we started making them the "bubble" of transmissions has swept out through our stellar neighborhood, out to a distance of about 70 light years at this point, which encompasses hundreds of stars and, as we now know, hundreds of exoplanets….

Hopefully the hibernation of the ATA is only a temporary pause, and SETI will soon get back to the job of putting Earth's big ear to the candidate Kepler worlds and listen intently for that world-changing whisper….

37.8148 -122.178

Perhaps no single development of the last century has been more influential or more important than the laser.

The concept of discovery is a powerful sentiment in science. Television’s Discovery Channel and print journalism’s Discover Magazine have folded the word into their identities, and as a child that my iconic scientist was a paleontologist, literally unearthing discoveries of the prehistoric wilderness. Just as motivating, however, is the concept of invention, and perhaps no single development of the last century has been more influential or more important than the laser. In 2010 the laser turns 50, and to celebrate, a group of organizations including the American Physical Society, the Optical Society, SPIE and IEEE Photonics Society have organized a year-long series of events this year dubbed LaserFest.

UC Berkeley has been celebrating LaserFest this past week with special exhibits and events over the weekend at the Lawrence Hall of Science, and a special lecture on Monday the 25th by Roger Falcone, Bob Byer, and Nobel laureate Charles Townes, also at the Lawrence Hall of Science.

Theodore Maiman built the first laser out of a rod of pink ruby in 1960. However, the laser’s precursor and underlying principle belongs to Townes. In 1954, he and colleagues constructed the ammonia maser, a stunning proof-of-principle device demonstrating that intense beams of light within a narrow color range could be produced. A flurry of excitement and research efforts followed aimed primarily at developing masers that could work at higher and higher frequencies of light.

As maser research matured the name changed as well. A high-frequency MASER (the acronym stands for Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) became the optical MASER. Then at a conference in 1959, Gordon Gould coined it as the LASER. (LASER is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.)” One of the conference’s organizers, Arthur Schawlow, rebutted that these new devices would be more important as oscillators rather than amplifiers, so perhaps they should really be calling it the LOSER (see the recent article in Physics Today). Curiously, substituting the O never caught on.

The laser’s influence in science and society, however, has been dramatic. We use lasers to read our hard drives and play DVDs. We use them to improve our vision. Lasers play an integral role in security systems. They are a crucial component of our ability to keep time accurately. The world’s biggest laser in Livermore could be on the verge of igniting fusion reactions. We even shot a laser at the moon, waited for it to bounce back, and used the information to calculate the moon’s distance to the Earth with unprecedented accuracy.

Time will tell what the laser’s future applications might be. Personally, I am rooting for a sign of extraterrestrial life from the Optical SETI project. The research collaboration’s website says that “A tightly focused light beam, such as a laser, can be 10 times as bright as the Sun and be easily observed from enormous distances.” Then again, if the aliens do decide to shoot a message our way via laser, let’s just hope that that they don’t decide to crank up the power so high that we all get vaporized.

37.7749295 -122.4194155

Geek Out by taking the Mars Survival Challenge

Forget the challenging landscapes of the Arctic or Everest; if you want a true survival test, how about Mars? Our red neighbor has inspired thousands of intrepid explorers (and a number of awful movies) to formulate colonization plans. With a little help from Google Mars, you can choose plot near all the important landmarks: Valles Marineris, Olympus Mons, or even the famous northern polar ice caps.

Thanks to our friends at the Lawrence Hall of Science, you too can help the colonization effort. At their Geek Out event on 11/18, you’ll be able to design your own Mars Base. There will be experts on hand from the SETI Institute and NASA to provide some info on the Martian landscape and what it takes to survive there.

You’ll be able to videotape your landscape to share with the rest of the universe. Who knows, the first ever Martian colony could be named after you!

This is the 2^nd LHS Geek Out event, a new monthly science series for adults. The evening will be full of interactive science, music, and cocktails. There is also a free shuttle from the Downtown Berkeley BART to the museum. For a primer, check out this video from the 1^st Geek Out event.

LHS Geek Out: Mars Survival Challenge
When: Wednesday 11/18, 7-10 PM
Where: Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley
Cost: $10, $8 for members and UC Berkeley Students
Details: Come to Lawrence Hall of Science, grab a drink and a friend, and get ready for some downright nerdy fun. All events include full access to exhibits, a cash bar, hors d’oeuvres, and of course the best view in the East Bay. Program is for adults only.

37.879329 -122.2463347

The Allen Telescope Array.

Well, it turns out our chances are much better than I thought. Grote Reber began conducting sky surveys in the radio frequencies with his newly invented radio telescope in 1937, and detected the first signals from outer space in 1938. In the seven decades since then, we've seen a multitude of radio telescope designs pop up all over the world, but we still haven't gotten signals from any little green men. What I didn't understand, until I spoke to Jill Tarter and Seth Shostak at the SETI Institute, is that in all that time, we've hardly looked at any space at all.

Since SETI's first experiment in 1960 by Dr. Frank Drake, and until very recently, they've only looked at a thousand stars out of about 400 billion stars in our galaxy, and there are 100 billion other galaxies to look at! There are two reasons for this: 1) The radio telescopes they've been using can only look at narrow swaths of the sky, and 2) they've had to RENT time on other people's telescopes, which constrains their search and budget. Now, the new Allen Telescope Array is being built just for them, and with it they'll be able to capture millions of frequencies from multiple star systems simultaneously. It will be the biggest and fastest tool in the world for seeking signs of ET!

To learn why scientists use radio frequencies in the hunt for intelligent life, and to learn more about the history & future of the search, watch our story SETI: The Search for ET. You can also watch our extended interview with Astronomer Jill Tarter. And hey folks, the SETI Institute is a non-profit organization, so if you'd like to help them out with the search, consider adopting a scientist like Jill Tarter or Seth Shostak. Go to Adopt-a-Scientist, or join Jill's team and become a TeamSETI member at Join TeamSETI.
Also, check out U.C. Berkeley’s SETI@home page and turn your home computer into a tool that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data.

Watch SETI: The New Search for ET story online, as well as find additional links and resources.
Joan Johnson is an Associate Producer for QUEST on KQED Television.

37.4024 -122.058