Current Approaches to the Search for Life

1. Current Approaches to the Search for Life Dan Werthimer, UC Berkeley http://seti.berkeley.edu

2. Berkeley SETI Group David Anderson, Bob Bankay, Jeff Cobb, Charlie Fenton, Andrew Howard, Terry Filiba, Josh Von Korff, Eric Korpela, Matt Lebofsky, Arielle Little, Geoff Marcy, Andrew Siemion, Mark Wagner, Shelley Wright, Dan Werthimer Frank Drake, Seti Institute Rem Stone, UC Santa Cruz Jim Cordes, Laura Spitler, Cornell NSF , NASA, Individual Donors Xilinx, Sun/Oracle, Fujitsu Agilent, HP, Intel

3. UC Berkeley SETI Programs

5. Lick and Keck Telescopes – Geoff Marcy Optical SETI Survey: 650 stars

6. Green Bank 300 foot telescope

12. SERENDIP IV Photos Courtesy NAIC Arecibo Observatory, a facility of the NSF • 168M channels • 100 MHz Band centered on 1420 MHz

13. Commensal Sky Survey at Arecibo

14. (Naional Energy Research Scientific Computing Center)‏ Data storage: NERSC HPSS

15. The SETI@home Client

16. Volunteer Computing Projects • Astronomy • SETI@home (Berkeley) • Astropulse (Berkeley) • Einstein@home: gravitational pulsar search (Caltech,…) • PlanetQuest (SETI Institute) • Stardust@home (Berkeley, Univ. Washinton,…) • Earth science • Climateprediction.net (Oxford) • Biology/Medicine • Folding@home, Predictor@home (Stanford, Scripts) • FightAIDSathome: virtual drug discovery • Physics • LHC@home (Cern) • Other • Web indexing/search • Internet Resource mapping (UC Berkeley)

20. Rosetta Screensaver

21. Citizen Science Projects Thinking@home • Stardust@home (UC Berkeley) • SetiQuest (Seti Institute) • Galaxy Zoo (Galaxy Classification) • Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count (1900) • Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Monitor Network • Clickworkers (mars crater identficiation - NASA) • Ebird, NestWatch, FeederWatch, Urban Birds (Cornell Univ.) • ParkScan (monitor San Francisco Parks) • ScienceForCitizens.net

22. Stardust (NASA) Stardust January 2009 19

23. CASPER Collaboration for Radio Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research Collaborators Xilinx, Fujitsu, HP, Sun Microsystems, NSF, NASA, NRAO, NAIC, CFA (Havard/Smithsonian), Haystack (MIT), Caltech, Cornell, CSIRO/ATNF, JPL/DSN, South Africa KAT, Manchester/Jodrell Bank, GMRT (India), Oxford, Bologna, Metsahovi Observatory/Helsinki University, University of California, Berkeley; Swinburne University (Australia), Seti Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara; University of California, Los Angeles; CNRS (France), University of Maryland Nancay Observatory, Univerity of Cape Town (South Africa), ASTRON (Netherlands), AcademicaSinica (Taiwan), Cambridge, Brigham Young University, Rhodes University (South Africa)

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25. The Search for microsecond pulsesat Arecibo and the Allen Telescope Array Geoff Bower, Griffin Foster, Eric Korpela, Peter McMahon, Andrew Siemion, Joeri van Leeuwen, Josh Von Korff, Mark Wagner, Dan Werthimer, and the ATA staff

26. Crab Giant Pulse Detection

27. Astropulse Volunteer Computing uSec Dispersed Pulse Search

28. Did We Miss Something? Dan Werthimer University of California, Berkeley http://seti.berkeley.edu

29. Likely YES – Examine history: SETI ideas morphing over 200 years

33. It’s naïve to think we know how best to search today, given our history of changing SETI fashion. • Multiple strategy is best (IR, Vis, Radio, pulse, continuous, targetted sky survey…) • Half of astronomy discoveries are serendipitous • Examine glitches in data • Data Mining Experiments (Virtual Observatory)

34. OPTICAL SETI - Example of anthropomorphic SETI 1961 Charlie Townes Paper largely ingored until 1999 1971 Cyclops report calculates radio >> optical Today’s lasers can communicate across galaxy

35. Traditional SETI dogma: ultra narrow band sine waves barycentric, beacons, FGK stars 21 cm Future dogma: many bandwidths, frequencies, drifting signals, pulses, IR, Visible, Radio M stars, galaxies, data mining searches leakage and beacon searches Dyson Sphere, Lagrange Point Searches..

36. Pulsed Communication – Wide-open Parameter Space Geoff Bower, et al.

38. Moores Law – Instruments using FPGA’s: 2X per year (1,000,000 over 20 years)

39. Future Spectrometers

41. Future Technologies • RFI mitigation (no need to go to the moon) • All sky - wide bandwidth telescopes • Pulsed high QE Vis/IR detectors (APD’s, SSPM’s…) • New Algorithms (PCA/KLT/Hoteling) • New Computing Technologies FPGA’s, GPU’s, Quantum Computing?

42. Use Sun As Gravitational Lens • Focus at 1000 AU • Read License Plates on Extrasolar Planet

43. When will Earthlings find ET? • Equal probability per logarithmic time interval • 10% chance in 10 years, 10% in 100 years, • 10% in 1000 years, 10% in 10,000 years, • 10% in 100,000 years, 10% in 1M years, • 10% in 10M years, 10% in 100M, 10% in 1E9 • 10% never

44. SETI HAIKU

45. Searching for lifeAnswers are revealedAbout ourselvesPaula Cook, Duke University

46. One million earthlingsBounded by optimismLeave their PC’s onDan Seidner

47. To Learn More about SETI or Participate in SETI@home or Vote for Who Won “the Great Debate – Are We Alone?” Dan Werthimer vs. Prof. Geoff Marcy SETI.berkeley.edu

48. Future SETI – whats needed • Public Interest • Scientific Literacy • Funding - Private, Industry, Government • SETI experts (student SETI researchers) • New Instruments (telescopes, signal processing)

49. Gaussian Candidates