The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is the collective name for a number of activities people undertake to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Some of the most well known projects are run by Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley and the SETI Institute. SETI projects use scientific methods to search for intelligent life on other planets. For example, electromagnetic radiation is monitored for signs of transmissions from civilizations on other worlds. The United States government contributed to early SETI projects, but recent work has been primarily funded by private sources.
There are great challenges in searching across the cosmos for a first transmission that could be characterized as intelligent, since its direction, spectrum and method of communication are all unknown beforehand. SETI projects necessarily make assumptions to narrow the search, the foremost being that electromagnetic radiation would be a medium of communication for advanced extraterrestrial life.
Read more about Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Radio Experiments, Optical Experiments, Gamma-ray Bursts, Probe SETI and SETA Experiments, Search For Visible Signs of Activity and Megascale Engineering Projects, Fermi Paradox, Post Detection Disclosure Protocol, Criticism, Results of Extraterrestrial Contact For Humanity
Famous quotes containing the words search for, search and/or intelligence:
“Within us, the people of the United States, there is evident a serious and purposeful rekindling of confidence, and I join in the hope that when my time as your President has ended, people might say this about our Nation: That we had remembered the words of Micah and renewed our search for humility, mercy, and justice.”
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“There’s a theory, one I find persuasive, that the quest for knowledge is, at bottom, the search for the answer to the question: “Where was I before I was born.” In the beginning was ... what? Perhaps, in the beginning, there was a curious room, a room like this one, crammed with wonders; and now the room and all it contains are forbidden you, although it was made just for you, had been prepared for you since time began, and you will spend all your life trying to remember it.”
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