86 planets to be searched for aliens

I know exactly where this thing is. I ski at Snowshoe in WV quite a bit. There is a huge dead zone for cell phones around this place for many miles for the telescope to operate without much interference. I always found it quite strange myself. I was last up there in March, I started asking questions of the locals about this colossal radio telescope that know one seems to know its actual use. Then I started suggesting my suspicions of it having to do with something strange, possibly ET, and I started to get big agreement. Some people even claiming that there have been strange anomalies like lights near it. But one the guys that told me that, approached me because of my ATS tee shirt So who knows...
It is odd though. This thing is HUGE. You 'could' take tours of it, I don't know if that's still possible though. If you wana check it out, I have found it on google maps, the cords are 38.433028,-79.839885 it even has its own air strips.

Another interesting thing SW from the telescope you can see what kinda looks like a stone circle laid out. It's def geometric, dono if it has to do with the telescope or not.

they will probably report that after searching all 86 planets no signals were found
2nd

I wish google Earth would update the sky and planets like more recent pictures im looking to find a place where I can get more recent close up pictures that I can save myself or look for .. anyone know where to go or how often google updates the sky and or planets ????

reply to post by mars1


1,235 planets !?!

Originally posted by simples
S+F this is brilliant news because I thought America had finished listening for alien signals when they pulled the plug on SETI in puerto Rico.

Actually, it's quite the opposite. SETI uses teams/volunteers such as myself, to assist in its research efforts. It's called BIONC/SETI@HOME and you can find the info here:

boinc.berkeley.edu...

Originally posted by JPhish
They forgot to put earth on the list.

Thats probably because they were meaning planets with Intelligent life on them

Originally posted by SamuraiCentury
reply to post by mars1

 

HEY! that's avatar is from one of my favorite games...wow I haven't even thought about that game or that lovable character in a while. What was his name again?

I believe you are speaking of Oddworld - Abe's Oddysee

86 planets to be searched for aliens?
Hmmm...High time they did so, now that their search for Bin Laden is over!!

The Telescopes can record 1 Gigabyte of data per second. Damn

reply to post by ATSecretAgent


The one positive thought I have is this; if one or two very old civilizations in a given galaxy manage to survive and become a space-faring civilization, ie interstellar travel, over the eons they may become very spread out in the galaxy. That increases the chances of a signal being received. They also might be looking for habitable planets, and not to concerned about them being inhabited already. This is why I believe Steven Hawking was on the side of caution. We have no idea what the situation is out there. There could be predatory species out there that, upon locating our planet from our radio transmissions, and finding it habitable, might come here and colonize it. And they might be as concerned about our presence as we are about ants. Its actually a little late to worry, as our radio signals are already out 100 light years or so.

Most of the worlds they are aiming at are so far away that the alien life would have to be vastly ahead of us. The worlds are so far away that a signal we receive would have been sent thousands upon thousands of years ago.

Still, with no timeline to work with, other than our own, it's worth a look. Could become interesting.

Nice to see somebody else picking up the torch.

I know this is a small point, but technically if the search discovers a planet with life on it, those beings would be the planet's natives.

Second line.

Im imaginaing by 2013 they will annonce that they've found a habitable one and possibly made contact!

Originally posted by AliciaJacob
Im imaginaing by 2013 they will annonce that they've found a habitable one and possibly made contact!

Unfortuantely, it wouldn't be possible to make contact by 2013. IF we decided to send a radio message to one of these planets it will take centuries to reach there.

I found a little more info, seems to be SETI related:

SETI@home

Green Bank Telescope observations to start Saturday. Grad student Andrew Siemion reports that new modifications to a data recorder at Green Bank that we need for our Kepler SETI observations are now complete, thanks to a huge amount of help from Paul Demorest, a former grad student and one of initial authors of AstroPulse. Our first hour of test time is scheduled for this Saturday, 17:30 EDT. We'll be observing with 450 seconds per target on 90 Kepler field stars with interesting planet candidates (~habitable zone, ~Earth size, ~Earth period, ~several planets), then do a raster scan of the entire Kepler field. 6 May 2011 | 22:29:54 UTC · Comment

SETI Berkeley Link

Then I found this:

May 14, 2011 - Washington Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley are aiming a radio telescope to detect signals of alien life on 86 possible Earth-like planets.

The search began on Saturday, May 8, when the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope - the largest steerable radio telescope in the world - dedicated an hour to eight stars with possible planets.

The colossal dish will gather 24 hours of data on each of the planets, which have been selected from a list of 1,235 planets identified by NASA's Kepler space telescope "It's not absolutely certain that all of these stars have habitable planetary systems, but they're very good places to look for ET," saidC Berkeley graduate student Andrew Siemion.

The Green Bank telescope will stare for about five minutes at stars in the Kepler survey that have a candidate planet in the star's habitable zone-that is, the planet has a surface temperature at which liquidater could be maintained.

"We've picked out the planets with nice temperatures-between zero and 100 degrees Celsius-because they are a lot more likely to harbor life," said physicist Dan Werthimer.

After the Green Bank telescope has targeted each star, it will scan the entire Kepler field for signals from planets other than the 86argets.

The complete analysis for intelligent signals could take a year, Werthimer said. "If you extrapolate from the Kepler data, there could be 50 billion planets in the galaxy," he said. "It's really exciting to be able to look at this first batch of Earth-like planets," he added.

Source

Here is another detailed article: Uwire Link

I'm a little confused as to thinking about time with alien planets. If we stand outside and look at a Star we are really looking at it's past because that is the light traveling towards us. But in actuality that star is older than our star. So would we detecting their current technology, or their past technology?

Does SETI search for natural Radio emissions from exo-planets? Or are they actually trying to detect technology?

We detected the exo-planets by observing the planets passing in front of the star. Would it be possible to build a telescope to detect if aliens built satellites in their solar system? Using the same method of planet hunting? I know we are talking about a huge increase, but I thought I've read/heard before if we had the funding we could build a telescope that large.

If we do detect life, is the next step to communicate with them in somewhat of real time? Say a 15 minute delay?

The exo-planet data that we have, is that information from the past? Isn't that done by signals bouncing back too?

Would detecting alien signals automatically imply those aliens have evolved to interstellar travel by the time that first signal reached us? If those aliens never went extinct? Say they're at the stage of building their first radio, and by the time that signal reaches our telescopes on Earth, 5000 years have passed on that alien planet.

I don't really know how it works, I think finding extremophiles is much more exciting, but detecting advanced alien life would be pretty creepy.

I'm a little confused as to thinking about time with alien planets. If we stand outside and look at a Star we are really looking at it's past because that is the light traveling towards us. But in actuality that star is older than our star. So would we detecting their current technology, or their past technology?

Yes, we see stars as they were in the past.

Does SETI search for natural Radio emissions from exo-planets? Or are they actually trying to detect technology?

SETI is looking for signs of intelligence (ie technology). These signals will be very different from natural radio sources.

We detected the exo-planets by observing the planets passing in front of the star. Would it be possible to build a telescope to detect if aliens built satellites in their solar system? Using the same method of planet hunting? I know we are talking about a huge increase, but I thought I've read/heard before if we had the funding we could build a telescope that large.

No - a telescope to image planets in detail, let alone satellites, would be an enormous spaced based system, and would easily be the biggest, most expensive project ever undertaken by humanity.

If we do detect life, is the next step to communicate with them in somewhat of real time? Say a 15 minute delay?

Our communications are limited by the speed of light, so forget about 15 minute delays. Realistically you'd expect to wait centuries for a return signal.

The exo-planet data that we have, is that information from the past? Isn't that done by signals bouncing back too?

Would detecting alien signals automatically imply those aliens have evolved to interstellar travel by the time that first signal reached us? If those aliens never went extinct? Say they're at the stage of building their first radio, and by the time that signal reaches our telescopes on Earth, 5000 years have passed on that alien planet.

I don't really know how it works, I think finding extremophiles is much more exciting, but detecting advanced alien life would be pretty creepy.

edit on 15-5-2011 by healthysceptic because: (no reason given)

reply to post by healthysceptic


Your original post was much easier to read just having my quote and below it your bullet points. Anyways, what will we pick up that will sound so different? What "presents" are we looking for? We are looking for the presence of radio waves?

What is the next step if we discover something? How could we make the telescopes more advanced to give us more information, and what kind of information might that be?

If we find something quickly and record it's data over a period of a week, how much time would pass for them? A week on Earth is how long on their planet? Would we see advances in their technology?

Is the whole point of this mission to locate planets that one day we may want to travel to? Will we be able to detect how advanced they are? Or just their presents? Will we be able to gauge their level of technology?