It has served as the backdrop for science-fiction movies like Contact and Independence Day. It’s been the focus of congressional oversight and funding. It was a point of contention with the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. It has even been a rather impressive looking screen saver. What is SETI? what is its purpose and is it worth the money that it costs?
In order to address these questions we need to understand what SETI is, where it originated and why people perceive a need for it.
Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence or SETI is a collective term for scientific searches for intelligent extraterrestrial life. One popular example of this research is the monitoring of electromagnetic radiation from the galaxy to identify signs of transmissions from civilizations on other planets. The work done by SETI researchers goes well beyond the radio astronomy aspects that the public is probably most familiar with, but that is the most outward facing aspect of their work.
SETI’s origins go hand in hand with the origins of modern radio-astronomy. In 1959 Cornell physicists Giuseppi Cocconi and Philip Morrison published an article in the science journal Nature outlining their theories on the use of microwave radio waves to communicate between the stars. Given the vast distances between stars that scientists were aware of even sixty years ago it was…
