~Is Anybody Out There…?~
This was the second — or third (kind of) — session we had at Science World with Dr. Peter Newbury from the Department of Physics and Astronomy in UBC. For those of you who have never met him, well, let’s just say that he is a tremendously entertaining guy to listen to. I’m sure everyone there was enthralled in his presentation. I definitely appreciated his humour after a long day!
But anyways, enough of the flattery~
During this session, we were introduced to human exploration of space using active rather than passive methods, as well our attempts to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligent life-forms. Below is a list of some examples that were given:
- Active Astronomy
- In 2003, the spacecraft Galileo was sent into Jupiter’s atmosphere on a “suicide mission”, and collected data on atmospheric pressure and content
- On October 9, 2009, the LCROSS was crashed into the moon, forming a crater, and exposed water underneath the moon’s surface.
- Spirit and Opportunity have been on Mars since January 2004, exploring the Martian surface.
- Curiosity is scheduled to land on the surface of Mars in August 2012. It is equipped with a laser to vaporize rocks.
- Communication
- Pioneer 10 (which went around Jupiter), and Pioneer 11 (which went around Saturn) have left our solar system and each hold a Pioneer Plaque in case aliens ever discover them.
Pioneer Plaque
- Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have left our solar system and each hold a Voyager Record made of gold containing songs and images in case aliens ever discover them.
- SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) allows citizens tohelp process data for collected from various space stations to search for interesting signals that may indicate extraterrestrial life (setilive.org)
- Project Ozma established in 1960 to detect radio-waves from the star Tao Ceti
- Arecibo Radio Telescope (largest single-aperture telescope) to search for signals indicating artificial intelligence
- Pioneer 10 (which went around Jupiter), and Pioneer 11 (which went around Saturn) have left our solar system and each hold a Pioneer Plaque in case aliens ever discover them.
Arecibo Message
For the activity, we were given strips of paper containing binary patterns, and asked to decode them into images. It was meant to be a simulation of the 3-trillion watt Arecibo Message sent by the Arecibo Telescope towards the M13 star cluster. There were many moments of epiphany for sure.
And that was it! It was a very entertaining session indeed.
We also started to plan for our year end “graduation”, and I am REALLY looking forward to the nerf gun fights, the dance, the capture the flag…EVERYTHING.
Well, better get to work to make all that a possibility!
~Reinaesaya~
jschung
Jason S
REINAESAYA
Chemoles 
Comments on: "Future Science Leaders Session Summary: March 27, 2012" (3)
Not to just repeat ^ but I also think Dr. Peter Newbury was an amazing guest! I’m not a space -nut but I found listening to him very entertaining and lots of fun! This session really got me thinking about what else is out there… After looking at all the statistics, I don’t think we could be the only forms of intelligent life! But with the speed of light, travel time and everything else taken into consideration, our odds of communicating with other are so low! 😦
Glad you found the astronomy interesting – it’s pretty hard not to get excited about finding life elsewhere in the Universe (but I’m biased, of course.) And thanks for the flattery 🙂
I know there are some who worry we shouldn’t be sending the “map” of where Earth is located. What if the aliens are hostile?
I think “killer aliens” is a TV/movie thing – look at War of the Worlds, V, MiB. On the other hand, what about Close Encounters, ET and (again) MiB.
Imagine the reverse: we detect an incoming alien spacecraft that may or may not have lifeforms onboard. I HOPE the governments of the World make plans for the possibility of hostile aliens. Assuming they don’t come down the landing ramp blasting us with lasers, the most dangerous thing about an alien visitor will be the germs and viruses they might bring. Our history is full of explorers accidentally killing off the inhabitants with small pox and other “alien” diseases they have no immunity for. So I hope the Centers for Disease Control around the World make the necessary plans for containment.
But, as we saw in the Frank Drake video, the benefits of meeting another advanced civilization will be, well, they’ll change our World forever. There will be advanced technology that we recognize — the spacecraft they used to get here, perhaps energy sources using fusion, the communication devices they use. And then there’s the technology I can’t even imagine. The visitors will have stuff and do stuff that will totally blow us away. Look at how the World changed when Apple put out the iPad. Imagine that kind of new technology. Times 1000!
I hope I’m around when they arrive!
Peter
Sums everything up perfectly ! I agree Dr.Newberry is a very entertaining/awesome guy 🙂 This was my favorite session we’ve done for space science by far ! The plaque we have on the space crafts is pretty ingenious too, though I’m not sure aliens would be able to decode what is said on it. And even if they do , I will always be paranoid that it’s too much info for them, you never know their intentions. Anyways I love the way you organized the info : concise, visible…….awesome 🙂