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Fifty Years of SETI Science and Technology. H. Paul Shuch, Ph.D. Executive Director Emeritus The SETI League, Inc. Are We Alone?. Birth of Radio Astronomy. Karl Jansky Bell Labs, 1932 Bruce Array Cosmic Static. Amateur Science. Grote Reber, W9GFZ 10 meter dish, 1937
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Fifty Years of SETI Science and Technology H. Paul Shuch, Ph.D. Executive Director Emeritus The SETI League, Inc.
Birth of Radio Astronomy • Karl Jansky • Bell Labs, 1932 • Bruce Array • Cosmic Static
Amateur Science • Grote Reber, W9GFZ • 10 meter dish, 1937 • first true radio telescope • first Milky Way map
Modern Radio Telescopes • Radiometers • Time Domain • Spectrometers • Frequency Domain • Interferometers • Spatial Domain
Project Ozma • Frank D. Drake • Green Bank WV, 1960 • Two Sun-like Stars
Why Photons? • Fastest spaceships known to man • Unimpeded by the interstellar medium
Search Strategies • Targeted Search • High directivity • Long duration • All-Sky Survey • Broad sky coverage • Drift-scan mode
Signal Analysis • FFT • millions of channels • narrow frequency bins • sinusoidal components • KLT • adaptive transform • computationally intensive
Hallmarks of Artificiality • spatial / temporal characteristics consistent with sidereal motion, • coherence not achievable by known natural emission mechanisms, • Doppler signatures indicative of planetary motion, • frequency selection which exhibits a knowledge of one or more universal constants, and • information content suggestive of a mathematically based culture.
To Learn More: www.setileague.org paul@setileague.org