THE US House of
Representatives has just proposed a staggering £7.3million ($10million) in funding
to aid the NASA’s hunt for signs of the extraterrestrial life in the cold depths of
space. The proposed bill includes two years of funding to “search for
technosignatures” from potentially intelligent and developed alien species.
The techno signatures would
include radio waves which an advanced civilization could be intentionally
blasting into space much like humans are. The Congress bill marks the first
time in 25 years the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is being
given proper funds. However renowned astronomer Dr Jill Tarter, former director
of the SETI Institute, warned the bill is far from a done deal.
She said: “This is an
authorisation bill, not an appropriation bill. Even if it passes, the
appropriators may not provide any SETI funding in their bill. But if they do,
that would be a very big deal.”
The search for alien life
outside of our solar system has generally been focused on the detection of artificially
created radio waves. But a revision of SETI’s mission statement could lead to a
brand new approach in the hunt for extraterrestrials.
In order to avoid false
positives and misleading signals, SETI could employ the help of Artificial
Intelligence (AI) to sift through the noise. Dr Tarter has pointed out that UFO
hunters often look for signs of intelligence and technology in space that are
similar to our own.
But the expert argued the
hunt for technosignatures is a limited approach because non-human intelligence,
technology and language appears in all shapes and forms. For example,
chimpanzees have been recognised to have culture and use tools. As such, alien
intelligence could take on a completely different and unrecognisable from
somewhere out in space.
Astrobiologist Nathalie
Cabrol, who organised a “Decoding Alien Intelligence” workshop at SETI, said the
time has come to search for life “as we do not know it”. In 1992 NASA initiated
the SETI programme to build the required instruments to scan the cosmos for
signs of extraterrestrial life.
However, the SETI initiative
was shut down just a year later by the Nevada Senator Richard Bryan. But the
Congress bill now promises a breath of fresh air for the SETI Dr Tarter stressed.
She said: “If it passes, it
would definitely be a sea-change in Congressional attitude since Senator Bryan
terminated NASA’s SETI program, the High Resolution Microwave Survey, in 1993.”
The sizeable budget would
allow the SETI to build new instrumentation and collect more data on a global scale. Dr
Tarter added: “By smoothing out the funding roller coaster that has
characterised this research field from the beginning, it will be possible to
attract the best and brightest minds with the best ideas from everywhere, and
commit to the long-term search efforts that might be required for success.”
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