In the vast universe, I will search up and down, and how will human beings explore extraterrestrial civilizations?
The vast universe and extraterrestrial civilization drive the unremitting exploration of mankind, what efforts have mankind made in this regard?
There is such a group of people, they do not wear raccoon skin hats, they do not wear boi knives, but they are like the early pioneers, with firm faith, with infinite love, resolutely trekking forward in the wilderness, looking at the "border of the earth", and unremittingly exploring in the endless dark and desolate universe.
The achievements, programs and visions of the space industry are exhibited annually at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC). The conference lasted for a week, with thousands of rocket engineers, representatives of national space agencies and satellite manufacturers flocking to attend a series of all-member meetings and exciting space exhibitions. Unlike the early frontier heroes who pioneered the American West, they did not wear fedora hats and boy knives, but instead wore suits and shoes. In fact, today's space explorers are not much different from the frontier pioneers of the past, except for their clothing differences —despite the countless difficulties and obstacles they face, they are fascinated by the unknown worlds that need to be explored.
Since 1971, the Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations (SETI) has been included in the International Astronautical Congress and has become an integral part of the Conference, which usually spends a full day presenting the latest data, technologies and social implications of the search for extraterrestrial civilizations. This year's conference is taking place in Vancouver. The Canadian city is a cosmopolitan metropolis named after British Navy Colonel George Vancouver, one of the most accomplished explorers of the eighteenth century. Surrounded by mountains on three sides and the Pacific Ocean on one side, the city is like a sparkling gem set in the color of the mountains and waters.
The search for extraterrestrial civilizations is very broad, from the latest telescope projects to the languages that may be used in the signals sent by extraterrestrial civilizations, and so on. This report material has a very large number of words and may be a great test of patience, so I have selected the following items:
The University of California is trying to continue to expand their search for extraterrestrial civilizations. Graduate student Aaron Parsons presented the UC Berkeley Optical SETI project. Like other optical projects, the project is looking for nanosecond flashes (billionths of a second or less) emitted by stars instantaneously. The project, which uses the 30-inch Leuschner telescope mounted on a hill dozens of miles east of San Francisco, has so far searched 7,500 star systems and 132 galaxies.
In addition to the optics project, the Berkeley team pioneered the idea of trying to find radio pulses. The project, known as Astropulse, will use its super computing power to verify that "as radio waves propagate through the boundless interstellar space, their intensity becomes very weak as the distance travels increases."
The Berkeley team's main project is "Radio Wave Project V searching for communities of intelligent life in the near-Earth" (SERENDIP V). The project uses the large Arecibo radio telescope to collect cosmic signals and provide data support for SETI@home servers. The signal receivers of the Arecibo Radio Telescope have nearly 1 billion bands and cover a total of 300 megahertz radio dials, nearly 50 times more powerful than the signal receivers of cable television.
The Berkeley team distributes one percent of the data received by the SERENDIP project to SETI@home web server. During the project, more than 50 million volunteers participated in SETI's individual projects and installed SETI@home screensavers on their computers. Through this program, participants' computers can use the excess computing space in the background to process data, and more than 2,000 computers participate in data processing every day. The combined computing power of these computers is equivalent to a supercomputer that operates at a speed of up to 65 trillion times per second, faster than the world's most advanced supercomputer (in 2004).
Dave DeBoer of the SETI Institute gave an update on the Allen Telescope Array. The array is currently under construction in northern California, and in the next few months, atA's number of dish antennas will grow to 32, which are enough to launch some formal observation projects. In addition to a series of important astronomical studies, ATA-32 will also begin its SETI mission to scan the central plane of the Milky Way. Obviously, the center of the Milky Way is where the apparent density of stars is highest, and the more stars there are, the greater the probability of discovering extraterrestrial civilizations, and it is natural that observation projects start here.
Thanks to specialized beam emission hardware and software, the ATA-32 will be able to observe 16 areas of the sky simultaneously. In other words, unlike past SETI experimental projects, this telescope will be able to examine many celestial targets simultaneously. THE ATA will eventually build a sprawling array of hundreds of antennas, at least two orders of magnitude faster than previous SETI experimental projects. This unprecedented project is enough to make the news front page.
Unlike the above methods, another way to find extraterrestrial civilization is to look for buildings. For decades, there has been a popular hypothesis in the field of SETI. Physicist Freeman Dyson was the first to propose this hypothesis, arguing that a truly advanced civilization might build a giant array of solar cells around its home planet to provide a reliable energy guarantee for the development of that civilization. Such an array of solar cells that completely surrounds the star is called the Dyson sphere.
The theoretical basis for this hypothesis is that no energy converter can achieve a 100% conversion rate, including solar cells. That is to say, when the solar cell is working, some of the energy must be converted into the form of thermal energy, so that the Dyson sphere will heat up and release infrared (thermal) radiation into space. If you find a star that emits more infrared light than normal, you might be able to confirm the approximate range of the civilization.
Richard Carrigan of Fermilab in Chicago has been looking up data collected by the IRAS infrared satellite a few years ago in search of such a star, but he has never found the ideal star. "The road is long and the road is long", but people's enthusiasm for finding extraterrestrial civilizations has not cooled down at all, and many people like Carrigan tirelessly explore in the sea of stars. It is hoped that in the near future people will rely on more advanced infrared telescopes to find such stars.
The SETI sessions of the International Astronautical Congress were as engaging as ever. But this is not surprising, after all, this 3000 trillion cubic light-years of space may not only be a wasteland, but also may have a intelligent civilization like our human beings.
BY: Seth Shostak
FY: Zhou Xinghe
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