Dr. Jill Tarter - Are We Alone? - The Forum at Poly Fall 2011

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Aliens abound on the movie screens, but in reality we are still trying to find out if we share our universe with other sentient creatures. Intelligence is very difficult to define, and impossible to directly detect over interstellar distances. Therefore, SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, is actually an attempt to detect evidence of another distant technology. If we find such evidence, we will infer the existence of intelligent technologists. For the past 50 years, the SETI community has had a very pragmatic definition of intelligence — the ability to build large transmitters! The majority of SETI searches to date have looked for radio signals coming from distant civilizations. We've recently begun looking for very short optical pulses as well. As our own technology matures and innovates, we may try other means of searching, and we will certainly improve upon the searches that we are already conducting.

Guiseppi Cocconi and Philip Morrison ended their 1959 seminal paper on SETI with the statement, "The probability of success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search, the chance of success is zero." This remains true today! At the SETI Institute we are trying to get the whole world actively involved in the search; in addition to donating their spare CPU cycles, we want to enlist Earthlings' minds and eyes as pattern recognition tools and, for those who are technically proficient, their skills at signal processing and code development to improve and expand the searching we can do.

Dr. Jill Tarter holds the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and is director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Tarter received her Bachelor of Engineering Physics Degree with Distinction from Cornell University and her Master's Degree and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. She served as Project Scientist for NASA's SETI program, the High Resolution Microwave Survey, and has conducted numerous observational programs at radio observatories worldwide.

This talk is cohosted with the Cal Poly Center for Excellence in Science and Math Education, the Central Coast Astronomical Society and the Cal Poly Astronomical Society.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• dr.
• jill
• tarter
• seti
• aliens
• communication
• radio
• telescope
• astronomy
• Space

[Zurround100]

Jill Tarter is my 2nd fave scientist after Michio Kaku BUT considering that our world has had life (in some form) for four BILLION years estimated yet has only had life capable of interstellar communication for half a century it makes me think that only a VERY small percentage of worlds with life on them are capable of sending out radio waves.

[caffingdu]

saw this same lecture, but at the other Cal Poly (Pomona) last year.