Scott Hayes, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter | [email protected]
Seth Shostak expects a lot of questions about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) during his visit to Jasper鈥檚 Dark Sky Festival this weekend.
As a senior astronomer and the Institute Fellow at the SETI Institute, he has heard them all.
Thankfully, he has most of the answers about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and all things related to the exploration of outer space.
鈥淣ormally, what I would talk about is SETI, of course, why we think there are aliens out there and how we're looking for them and what it would mean if we were to find them,鈥� Shostak said.
鈥淏ut the most interesting thing, in general, at least for me, is when they ask questions like, 鈥楽hould we talk back to them? Should we send them a message? Or is that dangerous?鈥�
Shostak first developed an interest in searching for alien life after seeing 鈥渁 lot of cheesy sci-fi films鈥� as a kid and was in his late 30s when he first became involved with a university astrophysics experiment in 1981.聽
鈥淚 used the Westerbork radio telescope (in the Netherlands) to look at the galactic center. It seems to me and to many other people to be sort of an obvious place for any advanced societies to put a transmitter with their galactic weather report or whatever it is they want everybody to know.鈥�
While astronomy deals with matters ranging from the beginnings of the universe to whether or not a meteor is a threat to Planet Earth, the question of life in space remains one of its most compelling quests.
Shostak admitted that no extraterrestrial intelligent lifeforms have been found 鈥� yet 鈥� but the 79-year-old is energized everyday to continue looking for that proof. He also maintains a sense of humour about the whole enterprise, offering his theory that Martians are coy and don鈥檛 broadcast much.
鈥淧eople do ask and say, 鈥榃ell, isn't it kind of a tedious occupation to be looking for a signal that will tell us if somebody's out there, and not having found one, despite tries that go back all the way to the beginning of the 20th century, actually if you count people like Tesla and Marconi?鈥欌�� he said.
鈥淭here are advances in astronomy, essentially every week. Most of them don't bear on the question of life in space or looking for life in space, but some of them do.鈥�
He noted how almost all stars have planets, which are commonplace in the cosmos, and while planets such as Neptune are often not very interesting, some very well might be.
This means the whole premise of SETI, that there might be somebody to find, has not yet been contradicted by the march of astronomy.
鈥淚t could have turned out the planets were rare, it could have turned out that planets the same size as the Earth were rare or things like that, but it hasn鈥檛,鈥� he said.
鈥淚n all the astronomical knowledge we've gained ever since Frank Drake did the first SETI experiment in 1960, everything is intended to support the premise that we have some cosmic company.鈥�
While the search through the vast reaches of outer space continues, the good news, he said, is that any signal should be fairly easy to recognize as distinct from a natural source.
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