Anthony Beasley, leader of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia, told the BBC that the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) should be taken far more seriously, and given the governmental support and funding it deserves.
His comments were made at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle last week. It was time for SETI to come in from the cold and be properly integrated to all other areas of astronomy, Beasley told the BBC.
We would like to see SETI transformed from a small cabal of scientists and engineers in California, isolated from academia to one that is as much an integral part of astronomy and astrophysics as any other field of inquiry.
The news comes after one of the largest radio telescopes in the world, the Very Large Array in New Mexico, announced a collaboration with the SETI Institute, a privately funded non-profit based in California, last week.
Despite the collaboration, funding for efforts to specifically look for intelligent life has been pretty minimal when compared to much larger and extremely expensive scientific endeavors, such as the Large Hadron Collider.
I’d feel far more confident arguing the case for SETI than for a particle accelerator, British senior cosmologist Martin Rees told the BBC. SETI searches are surely worthwhile, despite the heavy odds against success, because the stakes are so high.
The head of one of the USA’s national observatories says the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe needs to be taken more seriously.
Dr Anthony Beasley told the BBC that there should be greater government support for a field that has been shunned by government research funders for decades.
His backing for the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (Seti) marks a sea change in attitudes to a field regarded until recently as fringe science. Dr Beasley made his comments at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle.
The director of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville in Virginia said that it was now time for Seti to come in from the cold and be properly integrated to all other areas of astronomy.
Dr Beasley’s comments come as one of the private sector funders of Seti research announced that the Very Large Array (VLA) observatory in New Mexico would be joining the effort to detect signs of intelligent life on other worlds.
The VLA is a multi-antenna observatory and home to what is regarded as one of the best-equipped telescopes in the world.
According to Dr Andrew Siemion, leader of the Breakthrough Listen science team at the University of California, Berkeley’s Seti Research Center, the incorporation of the VLA would increase the chances of finding intelligent life by 10- or even 100-fold.
Equally important, according to Dr Siemion, is the credibility that the VLA’s involvement brings to the field.
We would like to see Seti transformed from a small cabal of scientists and engineers in California, isolated from academia to one that is as much an integral part of astronomy and astrophysics as any other field of inquiry.
Breakthrough Listen is a privately funded project to search for intelligent extra-terrestrial communications throughout the universe. The 10-year project began in 2016, funded by the billionaire Yuri Milner to the tune of $100m (£77m).
The Byte / BBC / ABC Flash Point News 2023.
Which will be a long time in being achieved given the “child-like ” level of Spiritual achievement so far on this Earth.
We are all sent here to learn ,contrary to the present mindset ,learning requires effort -pain mental or physical to progress to a better human being.