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SETI Institute to shut down alien-seeking radio dishes. Lacking the money to pay its operating expenses, Mountain View's SETI Institute has pulled the plug on the renowned Allen Telescope Array, a field of radio dishes that scan the skies for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. The timing couldn't be worse, say SETI scientists. After millenniums of musings, this spring astronomers announced that 1,235 new possible planets had been observed by Kepler, a telescope on a space satellite.
posted by Leisure_Muffin on Apr 26, 2011 - 146 comments

Larry King questions Stephen Hawking's recent argument - that we should not try to talk to aliens - and other matters extraterrestrial with the physicist Michio Kaku, Seth Shostak of SETI, the science fiction writer and astronomer David Brin and the actor Dan Aykroyd (1, 2, 3) (Previous, previous)
posted by fearfulsymmetry on May 13, 2010 - 120 comments

"If we are ever contacted by aliens, the man I'm having lunch with will be one of the first humans to know." Jon Ronson meets Paul Davies, the Chair of the Seti (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Post-Detection Task Group.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Mar 7, 2010 - 87 comments

It's been 35 years this month since the Arecibo message was sent from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, when the 1,679 digit message was sent once, towards Messier 13. More messages have been sent sky-wards since, in attempts for communication with extra terrestrial intelligence (CETI), with the (ill-fated) Team Encounter was instrumental in Cosmic Call 1999 and 2003 (more details: 58 page PDF). The more complex three-section Teen-Age Message was sent out in 2001, including a musical piece entitled 1st Theremin Concert for Aliens. In 2008 NASA sent the Beatles into space, transmitting "Across the Universe" for the 40th anniversary of the song's recording, the 45th anniversary of the Deep Space Network (DSN), and the 50th anniversary of NASA (prev). If you felt left out of the sending of signals, Talk To Aliens offered a "deep space e-mail service" and a certificate of interstellar broadcast (prev), but no more. Now Sent Forever offers a long-lasting alternative to traditional greeting cards, or simply the worst tie-in for Apollo 11. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Nov 23, 2009 - 14 comments

The "Great Filter" is a hypothetical barrier to explain why civilisations are so unlikely to progress to the point of inter-stellar colonisation that we have not encountered any in 40 years of looking. Maybe humanity has already negotiated the filter - as some massive evolutionary improbability - or perhaps it lies in our future as an almost-certain threat to our existence? We should hold our breath as we look for evidence of life on Mars.
posted by rongorongo on May 12, 2008 - 85 comments

Fears that malevolent aliens will tune into this week's broadcast of The Beatles' song "Across the Universe" have been voiced by scientists.
posted by monospace on Feb 7, 2008 - 68 comments

The first was found just fifteen years ago, after centuries of speculation. As of today, we're up to 227 and counting. Most are just wobbles in data, but we have pictures and exotica too. And we are looking for more (although some think we shouldn't look very hard and others are drawing some surprising conclusions). The science and technology of finding the most fascinating and elusive types demands some of the cleverest engineering, yet you can even have a go for yourself. Previously on Metafilter
posted by Devonian on Apr 22, 2007 - 23 comments

September 30th, 2002, scientists intercepted a 10 minute radio burst from the galactic center, 26,000 Light Years away. 77 minutes passed, and it repeated. And again. The signal repeated 5 times that evening.

Some think those signals are weird mysterious. Others think they are interesting mysterious.
posted by Lord_Pall on Oct 25, 2006 - 63 comments

The number of communicating alien civilizations = R^* x f_p x n_e x f_l x f_i x f_c x L. The formula is the Drake Equation, and modern estimates range from several thousand to none but us. You can solve it yourself. What is your estimate of the number of alien civilizations out there?
posted by blahblahblah on Aug 27, 2006 - 88 comments

'Alien' art Artist Jonathon Keats has made abstract paintings from SHGb02+14a, a radio signal discovered by SETI@home in 2003, then dubbed their best candidate yet for an attempt at contact by intelligent aliens. Keats is also returning the favour, broadcasting his work into space from the Judah L. Magnes Museum using CB radio.
posted by jack_mo on Aug 3, 2006 - 19 comments

Aliens and Children. This website features a series of drawings made by children who were abducted by aliens for the purpose of creating a new race of alien/human hybrids. They successfully resisted the aliens by using a thought screen helmet which blocks the telepathic control aliens have over humans.
posted by Robot Johnny on Feb 12, 2006 - 35 comments

Why SETI's search for intelligent extraterrestrial life is different from the work of proponents of Intelligent Design. An interesting bit of argumentation regarding the distinction between the simple signals searched for by SETI and the complex signals used in arguments for ID.
posted by voltairemodern on Dec 2, 2005 - 55 comments

Call the aliens using first intentional intergalactic communication system. Just $3.99 a minute, though prospective callers should know that they aren't really breaking new ground. Do you need inspiration about what historic message to send? The first commercial telegraph message was the poetic "What hath God wrought?" The first telephone call was the famous "Come here Watson, I want to see you." The first email, rather boringly, announced the availability of email. Stuck on the first word? Follow the path of Edison, who coined the word "hello" as a telephone greeting over Alexander Graham Bell's "Ahoy Ahoy." (Audio version) Just hope that you don't receive a collect call in return.
posted by blahblahblah on Oct 18, 2005 - 14 comments

[x] ok to transmit this posting into outer space (via space.craigslist.org)
posted by loquacious on Feb 28, 2005 - 9 comments

Fight AIDS @home is a valuable resource for your "wasted" computer cycles. Instead of search the universe for extraterrestrial life, shouldn't we be searching our world for cures to our own diseases?
posted by swerdloff on Dec 1, 2003 - 20 comments

ET Could Hack SETI. SETI, which uses down time on the computers of thousands of volunteers to search for intelligent signals from space, has a potential problem—besides information, a broadcast to us from an alien intelligence could also carry a computer virus. Leonard David writes in the main link's space.com article that physicist Richard Carrigan (who works here) takes it seriously. He thinks SETI should figure out how to decontaminate any signals it receives.
posted by jasonspaceman on Nov 24, 2003 - 35 comments

Nearly 4 years ago, Seti@Home project started.Today, thanks to millions of CPU and loyal users, after picking 200 interesting signals out of a few billions, they have started rescanning the most interesting ones at Araceibo. One step closer to ET.
posted by elpapacito on Mar 18, 2003 - 7 comments

Oxford University is looking to take advantage of distributed computing to find a cure for smallpox. Much like SETI@Home, the Smallpox Protection Project and Oxford's effort to cure cancer rely on individual computer users to download and run screensaver software to crunch numbers in an effort to speed up processing of large amounts of data. How will this kind of initiative impact science in the future? Can we, by volunteering our processors, be part of the quest for a cure?
posted by greengrl on Feb 5, 2003 - 19 comments

Have aliens answered our message? In 1974, as part of the SETI project, an encoded message was sent from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. On the 20th August, near the Chilbolton radio telescope in Hampshire, England, an amazing crop circle was discovered that appeared to answer the message....
posted by salmacis on Nov 14, 2001 - 25 comments

Fiber cut silences SETI@Home. In case you were wondering why you can't upload a data unit. It's supposed to be fixed today.
posted by Sal Amander on Mar 1, 2001 - 3 comments

Science on the cheap! Now this is cool. (more inside)
posted by Steven Den Beste on Aug 3, 2000 - 3 comments

Popular Power has released version 0.1.1 of its Worker software. It works kind of like SETI@home, except that the computing power can be organized to work on things like Influenza vaccine research, and they plan to compensate you for the cycles they use.
posted by muta on May 5, 2000 - 0 comments