New Ways To Search For Intelligent Life New ways of searching the universe for life keeps appearing. We humans are constantly trying to find out the answers to things we don’t know, and one of the most important things we want to know is if we are alone in the universe or it has other life in it. Many scientists have come around to the fact since the universe is so vast there must be other life, and of that group there are some who believe there could even be life which is intelligent and maybe smarter than us. Some believe this type of life may not want anything to do with such dumbos as people like us and may not ever regard us as intelligent. They also think they would regard us as warlike. It is hard to disagree with this opinion when you examine our history as a people. War has been a regular part of our lives since we were on this planet. First it was tribes killing each other than city states and now countries. There is no doubt we don’t as a whole possess the respect for intelligent life we should and the proof is in all this history. We don’t seem to learn this is wrong because as we advance we still fight wars only the wars have become more deadly than ever and now we even employ robots to do our killing in some instances. If there are other races out there and they don’t want to be found by people like us, first, I couldn’t blame them. Second how do they hide so well from us? Scientists are developing new devices and techniques to discover if they exist. The James Webb telescope is one of our new instruments, it uses an existing technique, a polished mirror. Actually, there are 18 hexagonal mirrors used in unison. Together they are 6.5 meters in diameter or 256 inches. In the old days telescope mirrors and lenses were measured in inches. The Canarias Observatory currently has the telescope with the biggest and most powerful mirror which is 10.4 meters or 409 inches. The Webb telescope may not have the biggest diameter mirror, but the fact it was placed where it is in space gives it the best views. Scientists are hoping they can eventually use it to find signs of life on other planets in the galaxy. It will not last forever because micrometeors hit it and eventually will destroy the mirror. The life expectancy of the telescope is about 10 years. You don’t hear much about that. Now that a new method has been found for producing far more powerful telescopes than the Webb using refraction and lenses rather than mirrors and doing this far cheaper and creating much lighter telescopes, there are some incredible projects on the horizon. It has been said we will be able to create a telescope using this new method which could be at least 100 times more powerful than the Webb telescope. One of the ways we search for intelligent life is by looking for radio signals. I always thought this was a waste of time because I felt an advanced race would not use this type of communication since it is far too slow and can only travel at the speed of light, and also because we are swimming in a sea of radio signals, which make it hard to know what we are receiving. A team of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley have developed a new technique to separate a signal coming from space from all those earthly radio signals. They say this will allow them to filter out all the other signals and allow them to pinpoint the space signal. There didn’t seem to be any mention about the signals from space which are our own. The more stuff we launch the more signals come back to earth from space. Then there are the natural radio signals which come from sources in the universe which are all over the place. The scientists say this is not a problem because first of all, they will be looking for signals which come from at least 10,000 light years away and natural radio signals are much broader than one created by intelligent creatures. There is a lot of talk about Artificial Intelligence and it is about to be used in the search for intelligent life. One of the things scientists want it to do is reexamine some of the results of the algorithms we have used in the search and see if we missed anything. Radio astronomy has adopted the use of A.I. to broaden their traditional search of the heavens. Instead of the traditional system where scientists listen for signals, the A.I. can do the listening. One of the things A.I. can do is a great job of pattern recognition. Scientists might have missed these patterns. One of the ways scientists have improved their search for intelligent life in the universe was by setting some of their searches in areas where they believe they have the best chance of finding it, such as in areas rich with stars. The search for intelligent life took a giant leap when we discovered the first exoplanets orbiting other stars. We now knew for sure there were other solar systems throughout space which could be similar to ours and thus there was a greater chance for life than first thought. Then we found some exoplanets that were in what is known as the Goldilocks zone, which is a zone which the planet orbiting the star is in which would allow for human life to exist. This is not too close to the star, but not too far away either. We also discovered there are planets like Mercury which are boiling hot on one side and very cold on the other, could host life in the zone between these two sides. The question is what is more important in the search for other intelligent life, the methods we use or the devices we are using? I do think eventually we will come out with a device which might be powered by quantum physics which will allow us to instantly see anywhere in the universe because of the principle of quantum entanglement. This allows for instant communication no matter how far away the communication needs to go. Once we have that, we will be able to see anywhere we want. This leads me to also think if there are some very intelligent races out there they probably can look in on us any time they want without leaving their planet.
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