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The Search for Extra-Terrestrial unIntelligence

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial unIntelligence. Jonathan Tennyson Department of Physics and Astronomy University College London. "The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." Harlan Ellison. Is there anybody out there?.

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The Search for Extra-Terrestrial unIntelligence

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  1. The Search for Extra-Terrestrial unIntelligence Jonathan Tennyson Department of Physics and Astronomy University College London "The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." Harlan Ellison

  2. Is there anybody out there? At least 100 thousand million (1011 or 1012) stars in the milky way At least 100 thousand million (1011 or 1012) galaxies in the universe Sagittarius Star Cloud / Hubble Space Telescope

  3. How to find aliens Hope that they visit us Listen for their signals Look for them

  4. Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) The Arecebo telescope

  5. SETI: >500,000,000 screensaver downloads and counting ……What has been found? Nothing

  6. Extra solar planets

  7. Kepler (the mission) Earth-size planet transiting Sun-type star ~ 0.01 % Kepler (NASA)launch 2009

  8. More than 1200 planetary candidates discovered by Kepler! Exoplanets are common…

  9. Jupiter—Sun: 15 m/s Present sensitivity: 1 m/s Earth—Sun: 0.09 m/s

  10. Characterizing extrasolar planets You are here!

  11. Habitable zone for different stars “Goldilocks zone”

  12. Earth and moon from the Galileo spacecraft Can one detect the signature of life on Earth?

  13. NASA’s Galileo Satellite Launch 1989 Arrived at Jupiter 1995

  14. “Flatulent ruminoids” Segan et al, Nature (1995)

  15. 100 million+ years ago – Plenty of methane emissions?

  16. Multicell- 1 0.1 Humans Eukaryotes Invertebrates 0.01 Oxygen 0.001 Prokaryotes 0.0001 Methane ? 0.00001 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 Time (Gy) Oxygen!!! Rye and Holland, 1998

  17. How far is it to the nearest star? A long way!

  18. “ We will never know how to study by any means the chemical composition (of stars), or their mineralogical structure ” Auguste Comte (1835)

  19. Fraunhofer’s map of the solar spectrum

  20. High resolution optical spectrum of the Sun

  21. Jumping between energy levels in an atom or molecule Level 3 photon Energy Level 2 photon Level 1 Absorption Emission

  22. Methane in the Earth’s atmosphere Before photosynthesis After photosynthesis

  23. A pale blue dot, at 6 billion km away… () C. Sagan

  24. Direct observation of star GQ Lupi and its planet GQ Lupi b Direct observation 109 photons in the VIS -> Coronagraph 106 photons in the IR -> Nullinginterferometry

  25. Transit of Venus June 8th 2004. Next June 5th 2012.

  26. Radial velocity / Occultation HD 209458b Period = 3.524738 days Mass = 0.69 ±0.05 MJupiter Radius = 1.35 ±0.04 RJupiter Density = 0.35 ±0.05 g/cm3

  27. NASA’s Spitzer space telescope

  28. Primary transit + IR + Spitzer Beaulieu et al., 2007 Knutson et al., 2007

  29. Water line list: BT2 Barber et al., 2006 Water, T-P at the terminator Tinetti et al., Nature, 444, 169 (2007)

  30. Pont et al., 2007 Swain et al., 2007 Knutson et al., 2007 Beaulieu et al., 2007 Methane, plus Confirmation of water and hazes!

  31. So far discovered:Water H2O Methane CH4 Carbon dioxide CO2 Carbon monoxide CO Hydrogen cyanide HCN On HD189733b with more to come HD1897733b too hot for life Giovanna Tinetti, UCL

  32. Transit hunters Transits of objects down to Earth-size COROT (CNES/ESA)launch Dec. 2006 (mission extended) 25 transiting planets found including 1 super-earth Kepler (NASA)launch 6 March 2009. 3.5 year mission: 22 confirmed planets so far + >1200 candidates

  33. The New World Observer NWO is a large-class Exoplanet mission that employs two spacecrafts: a “starshade” to suppress starlight before it enters the telescope and a conventional telescope to detect and characterize exo-planets. Cash, Nature, 2006

  34. Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory V-groove side sunshield Telescope Baffle 1.5m silicon carbide mirror GaAs Solar Cells Detectors Service Module

  35. Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory • 1.2 to 1.5m dedicated telescope • L2 halo orbit, direction anti-Sun • Broadband spectral coverage from VIS to IR ( 0.4 to 16 µm ) • Maximum spectral resolution R=300 • 5 year mission PI Giovanna Tinetti (UCL) launch 2022?

  36. A year in the life of July 10 Talk WCGS Science Conference July 10 European Space Agency (ESA) formal call for M3 missions Oct 10 European Research Council (ERC) awards me 2.5 MEuros for ExoMol: Molecular line lists for exoplanet & other atmospheres Nov 10 59 Expressions interest to ESA Dec 10 43 Formal bids to ESA Jan 11 13 bids selected (including EChO) Feb 11 8 bids selected (including EChO) March 11 4 bids selected for further study: EChO, LOFT, MarcoPolo-R, STEQUEST May 11 ExoMol project starts June 11 UK Space Agency + PPARC select EChO as top priority

  37. Future timelines (approximate) 2011-13 Specification and testing 2014 “Down selection” 2015-19 Instrument and satellite build 2019-21 Assembly and testing 2022 Launch ?

  38. Linelists completed or under construction @ UCL by H3+ Liesl Neale (H2D+Taha Sochi)‏ H2O Bob Barber(HDOBoris Voronin)‏ HCN/HNC (H13CN/ H13CN)Greg Harris HeH+Elodie Engel NH3 Bob Barber and Sergei Yurchenko (Dresden)‏ HCCH Andrea Urru C3 Santina La Delfa and Taha Sochi The ExoMol project www.exomol.com

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