London: Are we alone in the universe? We could be closer to finding out.
British astronomers are joining forces to hunt for ET — or at least for signs of his existence.
In a move that comes only weeks after the UK Government closed its UFO hotline, scientists from 11 institutions, including the Jodrell Bank observatory, have formed a network to help those working in different fields of research to share their expertise.
Telescopes will listen for radio and light “broadcasts” beamed by TVs, radios, satellites, radar and lasers from other worlds.
And should a message from little green men be intercepted, we might even be ready to reply. Communications experts more used to working on the intelligence of chimpanzees and dolphins are trying to devise ways of decoding any messages and framing a response.
The network, coordinated by Dr Alan Penny of the University of St Andrews, was officially launched on Monday at the National Astronomy Meeting, organised by the Royal Astronomical Society, at St Andrews, Scotland.
The UK SETI Research Network will bolster Britain’s long-running involvement in the US-based Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, project.
Dr Penny said the interception of light and radio signals that were wholly artificial and could not be made by nature would be proof that we are not alone.
“If ET fired a powerful laser through a big optical telescope to send a signal or announce their existence, those pulses could be detected over many thousands of light years,” he said.
“We need to get more time on telescopes for the project and then we’ll get a flood of data. At the moment if we detected a signal that was unambiguously artificial that would be it.
“You wouldn’t need to understand the message — its nature would tell us that we are not alone. Then once you’ve found it you can look more closely to see if there is a message. If it looks as though there is, [intelligence agency] GCHQ can get going and try to decode it.”
Others believe that a new level of code-breaking will be required.
Dr John Elliott, an expert in human and animal communication from Leeds Metropolitan University, said: “Standard decipherment and decryption techniques used by the military and security agencies are not going to help much.
“To put the challenge into context, we still have scripts from antiquity that have remained undeciphered over hundreds of years, despite many serious attempts.”
However, some scientists say that if we alert hostile aliens to our existence we risk an invasion that could lead to the end of life on Earth.
They argue that if ET has the technology to cross space to reach us then any defences we have will be all but useless.
And physicist Stephen Hawking has warned that aliens may plunder Earth for its resources.
But Professor Ian Crawford, of Birkbeck, University of London, told the conference that any aliens “would have made themselves known by now”.
Dr Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society, said: “If we found even one civilisation elsewhere, it would be an entirely sensational result.”
