seti

I've been very fortunate as a documentary and adventure series filmmaker, having the opportunity to travel all over Canada and the world doing what I love. But my latest project sent me on a mission to a lunar landscape in Canada's Far North — one of the most difficult places I've ever had to reach. For the CBC Short Doc My New Moon Suit, we travelled to Devon Island, nestled in Canada's Arctic, to run our very own test of a new spacesuit. It's here, on the world's largest uninhabited island, that new-concept spacesuits…

A recent SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) effort focused on a famous supernova from 1987, working under the premise that aliens might use such events to draw attention to themselves with synchronized beacons. Although this hunt came up short, it lays the groundwork for future searches using the same innovative strategy.Nvidia’s Almost Worth 2 Trillion. Is It a Bubble, or Is It Just Getting Started?This principle, called the SETI Ellipsoid strategy, offers a potential solution to a challenging problem: How…

The SETI Institute, a leading non-profit in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, has received a transformative $200 million gift from the estate of Franklin Antonio, a long-time supporter who passed away last year.What Inspired Dominic Monaghan's Performance in Moriarty?The recent $200 million gift from Franklin Antonio’s estate, announced last week, will likely serve as a game-changer for the SETI Institute. Antonio was a big supporter of the Institute’s work for more than 12 years, and his donation is expected…

Humanity has sent its own simple outgoing messages, like Frank Drake’s message from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to the globular cluster M13, which included information about our solar system and DNA, or the Golden Records on the Voyager spacecraft, which include sounds and symbols showing the diversity of life and culture on Earth. We’ve even tried sending outbound “music lessons.” Still, aliens might beam us something more complex, or a message in a format people have never encountered before. No matter how…

After extensive efforts to detect extraterrestrial intelligence, a message from outer space was picked up by three prominent Earth-based radio astronomy observatories today. The signal originated in the vicinity of Mars, and its contents remain hidden at present. However, contrary to initial excitement, the message is not of extraterrestrial origin. It was deliberately transmitted as part of a simulation to mimic an actual communication from aliens. This exercise serves as a dress rehearsal, enabling us to gauge our…

The search for extraterrestrial civilizations has gotten a major boost as SETI joins forces with the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) near Socorro, New Mexico. It combines the giant radio telescope with a new processing system to increase the search's effectiveness by a factor of 1,000.The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is one of those scientific enterprises that is either a tremendous waste of time and money or could result in one of the greatest events in human…

Frank Drake, a leading figure in planetary astronomy and astrobiology who inspired the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, died Friday, September 2, at the age of 92. “Frank essentially pioneered the field of SETI as a scientific endeavor by being the first to actually conduct a SETI experiment,” says Bill Diamond, president of the nonprofit SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.Drake was born in Chicago in 1930. He studied engineering physics at Cornell University and then served as an electronics…

Frank Drake, the eminent radio astronomer who in 1960 performed the first search for  extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) around other stars, died Friday at his home near Santa Cruz, California. He was 92. His daughter, science journalist Nadia Drake, shared the news on her website. “A titan in life,” she wrote, “Dad leaves a titanic absence.” “Frank founded an entire field,” says astrophysicist Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. “He played a crucial…

Since time immemorial, humans have looked to the heavens above to make sense of life below, right here on Earth. What else is out there among all the countless galaxies, stars and planets? Are we truly alone in the universe? Such questions are crucial for establishing humanity’s cosmic context and have inspired a variety of speculative answers from a wide range of philosophical and scientific traditions. Buddhists believe in different Buddhas living in different worlds. The Greek atomists also believed in the plurality of…

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."– Carl Sagan (Cosmos, 1980) This phrase is the standard that astronomers will be applying to a curious signal captured with China's "Sky Eye" telescope that might be a transmission from alien technology.  An article reporting the signal was posted on the website of China's state-backed Science and Technology Daily newspaper, but was later removed. So have astronomers finally found evidence of intelligent found life beyond Earth? And is it being hushed up?We should be…