http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/h...907308.stm

There is already proof they've been here, now scientists using laser technology will be able to find ET signals.

Telescope bid to spot alien beams

A new optical telescope designed solely to detect light signals from alien civilisations has opened for work at an observatory in Harvard, US.
It will conduct a year-round survey, scanning all of the Milky Way galaxy visible in the Northern Hemisphere.

Seti is an exploratory science to scour the cosmos for signatures of technology built by alien beings.

Some experts believe alien societies are at least as likely to use light for communicating as radio transmissions.

Sending laser signals across the cosmos would be a very logical way for ET to reach out

Bruce Betts, Planetary Society
The new telescope, which has a 1.8m (72-inch) primary mirror, is the first dedicated optical Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) telescope in the world.

It has been installed at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics at Oak Ridge Observatory.

"The opening of this telescope represents one of those rare moments in a field of scientific endeavour when a great leap forward is enabled," said Bruce Betts, director of projects at the Planetary Society, which funded the telescope.

"Sending laser signals across the cosmos would be a very logical way for ET to reach out; but until now, we have been ill-equipped to receive any such signal."

Bright flashes

Astronomers have been using radio telescopes to look for transmissions from an extraterrestrial intelligence since the 1960s.

But some scientists believe that alien civilisations might opt for visible light to communicate.


Previous searches have used radio telescopes to search for signals
Visible light can form tight beams, be incredibly intense, and its high frequencies allow it to carry enormous amounts of information.

Using only present-day terrestrial technology, a bright, tightly focused light beam, such as a laser, can be 10,000 times as bright as its parent star for a brief instant. Such a beam could be easily observed from enormous distances.

"This new search apparatus performs one trillion measurements per second and expands 100,000-fold the sky coverage of our previous optical search," said the optical telescope's project director, Paul Horowitz of Harvard University, Massachusetts.

The telescope's custom processors will process the equivalent of all books in print every second. As the telescope scans strips of sky, it employs a custom-built "camera" containing an array of detectors that can detect a billionth-of-a-second flash of light.

It has been funded by the Planetary Society with support from the Bosack/Kruger Foundation.

you're obsessed with this stuff, aren't you!

ReturnofDOOK said:

todd's new avvie! if only we could have animated ones

charlottegelin said:

not really... every once and a while i come across some info on it.. i don't spend much time thinking about it at all though really!

yes, so get them green laser pointers, and point them up to the sky, signal the mother ship, because there's no hope for this place.

MickG said:

But ultimately 'no hope' means very little. It's our nature to self-destruct so why stress? It's what we do. Trees grow and die. We advance, pat ourselves on the back, then destroy ourselves. It's as natural as the sun rising every day.

Fauxie said:

natural to the natural world, but in the natural world I am not natural.

MickG said:

There is nothing else. 'Nature' is such a pointless term. What is not natural? What is not?

Fauxie said:

nature is a thing created by god, which contains god, but it is not god.

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[Edited 4/15/06 2:12am]

JPW said:

Created by God or otherwise, what is not nature?

Fauxie said:

well, rocks, for example. anything not having a life-force.

JPW said:

And you feel confident making such a distinction between say a rock and a human as two separate 'things'?

JPW said:

well who made all these rocks then!

charlottegelin said:

Exactly.

Call it what you will, but they came from the same place I did.

charlottegelin said:

you didn't listen to what i was saying.

rocks are designed by god but they aren't part of nature, which contains the life-force of God.

JPW said:

I know

they have already found proof

its the telling us part they

neglect

shausler said:

I mention that there is already proof at the start of the thread, and yes it is surely true. They exist and they've been here!

JPW said:

I will have nightmares now

charlottegelin said:

from what we know, most appear at the outset to be benevolent