WASHINGTON DC – To spot potential intelligent life out there in the great beyond, first you must cast a net wide by using an array of techniques and technologies.
Any “fishing expedition” for E.T. includes close-in studies of life in extreme environments right here on Earth, to help us recognize any signatures we might find on Mars or deep diving through the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon, Europa.
The search can also blend in the use of space-based telescopes to inspect Earth-like planets circling their home stars. Then there’s cupping a proverbial ear to the cosmos using radio telescopes to pick up any bustling interstellar civilization or perhaps look for far-off laser-pulsed communiqués from extraterrestrial homebodies.
These and other efforts are actively pursued by the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, right there in the high-tech heartbeat of Silicon Valley. More than a hundred institute scientists are busily carrying out research in astronomy and astrophysics, astrobiology, as well as exoplanets, climate and bio-geoscience and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
Space.com caught up with Bill Diamond, President and CEO of the SETI Institute for an exclusive, mind-stretching close-encounter discussion regarding the mounting evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Spoiler alert! It’s not that old tried, true and tired query “are we alone?” Rather, it’s more like “just how crowded is it?”
There’s a lot going on today in terms of searching for and trying to understand potential extraterrestrial life in the universe, Diamond said.
“Much of the first several decades of SETI, the effort has been quite minimal, looking with fairly ‘insensitive’ instruments in fairly narrow parts of the radio spectrum in random parts of the sky. So hardly anything that could be considered a comprehensive endeavor,” said Diamond.
But even today, in many ways, SETI work is still in the early stages. However, more and more is taking place with an increasing number of instruments and technologies around the world. “There’s an extensive and expanded effort ongoing now,” Diamond said.
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