Search For Intelligent Life There is one thing which I think we can all agree on about humans and it is we are a curious race. The degree of curiosity varies in us, but I think at least a small part is in everyone. If it wasn’t for this curiosity, the United States would not exist. It came about because we were exploring and looking for shorter routes to known places. We find this curiosity in all races but also in all different degrees. We are finding out more about ancient different cultures we suspected had no outside contacts. To our surprise, they had more contacts than we ever dreamed and this was verified by finding ancient articles from around the ancient known world in their cities, towns and villages. Even the Aborigines, which we believe are the oldest culture on earth were found to have had contact with outside races. This curiosity even extends to the heavens. Some ancient races studied the stars for hundreds of years. We know they were interested in astronomy, but were they also interested in finding what they called gods and we call extraterrestrials today? We have the ancient pictures drawn on cave walls of what look like UFOs and even aliens and even more amazingly some of the alien drawings look like what we call today the Grays. A race which many believe have come to earth on different occasions. Is all this just a coincidence? Sometimes facts are so overwhelming coincidence has to be ruled out. Today we are looking for extraterrestrials, but when did this search really start. The ancient Greeks used to debate the fact alien life could exist. Today we still debate it with the debates ranging from microbes to intelligent species. There was an idea in the 1820s put forward to signal other intelligent life and see if we could get a response. A German named Carl Friedrich Gauss invented the heliotrope. He wanted to use his invention to reflect sunlight out into space and wait for a reply. Obviously, this would take too long for the light to go further than the solar system. I don’t know if he ever tried to contact aliens, but if he did it was not made public as far as I can see. An astronomer in the 1840s must have been reading a lot of adventure books where a stranded sailor is marooned on an island and builds a signal fire when he sees a passing ship. I say this because Joseph von Littrow put forward his idea for contacting aliens. It was quite simple; he wanted to build a 30 meter wide circle and fill it with kerosene. He then would light the kerosene at night. I guess most of us will agree this was certainly an impractical idea. There was a belief in the 19th century Venus was our best chance for finding life. Electric lamps probably using arc lights were to be focused through a parabolic mirror, and the mirror aimed at Venus. Venus was believed to be the sister planet to earth. The idea was to flash the light on and off to get the attention of the beings on Venus. There was also a plan to put reflectors aimed at Mars on the Eiffel Tower which would bounce sunlight off of them and send it to the Red Planet. As you can see the search for intelligent life has been thought about for quite some time. Just because I may not have documentation on certain attempts doesn’t mean others didn’t try to use some means to accomplish it. Once radio communication came to be, it was thought by some this was the best way to contact the aliens who were supposedly waiting for us to advance to this point. In 1901 Nikola Tesla thought he had received a signal which came from Mars. He had set up a giant tower for sending and receiving signals. He was not the only one. Marconi said he believed he had received signals from outer space 20 years later. Not much went on between the time Marconi said he discovered a signal and 1959. In 1959 it was demonstrated the radar being used was now powerful enough to pick up signals from space and also send them. A lot of interest in aliens had been drummed up by movies and television and the public had gotten more interested in the attempt to discover alien life even though the government thought we were not ready to find alien life existed. On November 20, 1984 the SETI Institute was incorporated. Their goal was to try and contact extraterrestrials. We had sent two Voyager spacecraft out into space containing a golden record which described us and the location of our planet in 1977, but it was to exit our solar system and it would take over 50,000 years to reach the nearest star system. While this seemed like a hopeless venture, it did cause even more interest in trying to contact aliens. SETI was set up to look for radio signals which had been suggested by a scientist in NASA in 1971 and was spoken about in the publication Project Cyclops. SETI started out modestly. They established rules for determining if a signal was extraterrestrial. The major rule was if a signal was detected, the antenna was to be slewed away for a specific period of time than used to reacquire the signal. If the signal was not reacquired, it was not considered to be a reliable acquisition. It was a rocky road for SETI and they even lost their federal funding at one point and existed on donations. Today SETI is funded by the National Science Foundation and any donations they receive. Their equipment is updated periodically to make sure it is the most sensitive available in their price range. On August 15, 1977 SETI believed that had received a signal from an intelligent civilization and it excited everyone at the Institute. After the signal was received and printed one of the astronomers wrote WOW! In red ink next to it. They slewed the receiver out of the way, waited the required time, but could never recover the signal. I think it is fair to say today most of us are interested in finding alien life. While we focus on finding microbes, we certainly haven’t ruled out finding intelligent life and at the least animal life. Our rovers look for it and our probes are bringing back soil and rock samples from bodies in space in the hope of finding something living.
|
