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Space Topics: Search for Extraterrestrial IntelligenceThe Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: A Short HistoryPart 8: The New Searches
It is one of the oddities of SETI history that in spite of increasing public interest in extraterrestrials, and despite a growing literature on the subject, a full decade passed before the Green Bank conference's call for action was answered. While a few SETI searches were launched in the Soviet Union under the leadership of radio astronomer Iosif S. Shklovskii, no immediate successor to project Ozma emerged in the West. Though the members of the Order of the Dolphins, veterans of the Green Bank conference, continued lobbying intensely for a sustained radio search, it was 1971 before a new search was finally launched. The 1960s were a decade of intellectual brainstorming for SETI researchers. During this time SETI ideas progressively gained ground in the scientific community, and lively debates took place on the most basic issues of the emerging field: what kind of civilizations might be contacted, what kind of signal we should look for, where to search, and how. The exchanges were lively and fruitful, but they did not produce actual searches. An actual SETI program required a strong conviction about the type of alien intelligence one is searching for, and a commitment to a specific search strategy, In the 1960s the field was still groping towards a suitable and widely acceptable approach. What emerged from the debates was what physicist Freeman Dyson called "The orthodox view" on life in the universe: Life is common in the universe. There are many habitable planets, each sheltering its brood of living creatures. Many of the inhabited worlds develop intelligence, and an interest in communicating with other intelligent creatures. It makes sense then to listen for radio messages from out there, and to transmit messages in return. It makes no sense to think of visiting alien societies beyond the solar system, or to think of being visited by them. The maximum contact between alien societies is a slow and benign exchange of messages, a contact carrying only information and wisdom around the galaxy, not conflict and turmoil. (Quoted in Steven Dick, The Biological Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 438. In addition, a growing consensus emerged that searches should be conducted close to the hydrogen emission frequency (1420 MHz, or 21 cm) and perhaps in the water hole - the band between 1420 and 1660 MHz. Most - though not all - of the searches conducted since that time have accepted these basic assumptions and followed some version of this basic strategy. --Amir Alexander |
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