METI International, known simply as METI, is a non-profit research organization founded in July 2015 by Douglas Vakoch [1] that creates and transmits interstellar messages to attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial civilizations. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] It is based in San Francisco, California. [3] [6]
METI targets nearby stars and researches the nature of the messages to send. [1] [9] On October 16, 17, and 18, 2017, it sent a message consisting of a scientific and mathematical tutorial to the red dwarf Luyten's Star, just over 12 light years from Earth. [10] [11] [12] The message was sent from a radio transmitter at the EISCAT research facility in Tromsø, Norway. [13] One of METI's missions is to examine people's views of transmitting interstellar messages. [2]
METI's aim is to build an interdisciplinary community to design interstellar messages, within the context of the evolution of intelligence and language. [14] In May 2016, it convened the meeting “The Intelligence Of SETI: Cognition And Communication In Extraterrestrial Intelligence” in Puerto Rico. [2] [5] In May 2018 in Los Angeles, it held “Language in the Cosmos” in conjunction with the International Space Development Conference. [14] [15] to examine the connection between astrobiology and linguistics. [9] On March 22, 2017, it held a workshop in Paris examining the question "What is life?" from an extraterrestrial perspective. [16]
METI also conducts an optical search of extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). [17] [2] Its optical observatory in Panama looks for laser pulses from advanced civilizations. It has examined anomalous stars like the nearby red dwarf star Ross 128, [18] as well as HD 164595, 94 light years from Earth. [17] None of the searches has yielded evidence of artificial signals. [17] [18]
American scientist and science-fiction author David Brin has questioned "whether small groups of zealots should bypass all institutions, peer critique, risk appraisal or public opinion, to shout ‘yoohoo’ into a potentially hazardous cosmos" and so force a fait accompli on humanity. [19]
Numerous other authors and scientists have expressed similar concerns, generally known as the "Dark Forest Theory" of ETI, including Stephen Hawking. [20] [21] Of particular interest in science fiction is Cixin Liu's Remembrance of Earth's Past , exploring the theory and some of its implications. [22] [23]
Notable members of METI's Board of Directors and Advisory Council include:
The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life compared to the apparently high a priori likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a collective term for scientific searches for intelligent extraterrestrial life, for example, monitoring electromagnetic radiation for signs of transmissions from civilizations on other planets.
Frank Donald Drake was an American astrophysicist and astrobiologist.
The SETI Institute is a not-for-profit research organization incorporated in 1984 whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to use this knowledge to inspire and guide present and future generations, sharing knowledge with the public, the press, and the government. SETI stands for the "search for extraterrestrial intelligence".
The Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal detected on August 15, 1977, by Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope in the United States, then used to support the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The signal appeared to come from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius and bore the expected hallmarks of extraterrestrial origin.
The communication with extraterrestrial intelligence (CETI) is a branch of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) that focuses on composing and deciphering interstellar messages that theoretically could be understood by another technological civilization. The best-known CETI experiment of its kind was the 1974 Arecibo message composed by Frank Drake.
Aleksandr Leonidovich Zaitsev was a Russian and Soviet radio engineer and astronomer from Fryazino. He worked on radar astronomy devices, near-Earth asteroid radar research, and SETI.
Active SETI is the attempt to send messages to intelligent extraterrestrial life. Active SETI messages are predominantly sent in the form of radio signals. Physical messages like that of the Pioneer plaque may also be considered an active SETI message. Active SETI is also known as METI.
Metalaw is “the entire sum of legal rules regulating relationships between different races in the universe.” It is a concept of space law closely related to the scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The idea is an elaboration of Immanuel Kant's Categorical imperative "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
A post-detection policy (PDP), also known as a post-detection protocol, is a set of structured rules, standards, guidelines, or actions that governmental or other organizational entities plan to follow for the "detection, analysis, verification, announcement, and response to" confirmed signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. Though no PDPs have been formally and openly adopted by any governmental entity, there is significant work being done by scientists and nongovernmental organizations to develop cohesive plans of action to utilize in the event of detection. The most popular and well known of these is the "Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence", which was developed by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), with the support of the International Institute of Space Law. The theories of PDPs constitute a distinct area of research but draw heavily from the fields of SETI, METI, and CETI.
The cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact is the corpus of changes to terrestrial science, technology, religion, politics, and ecosystems resulting from contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. This concept is closely related to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), which attempts to locate intelligent life as opposed to analyzing the implications of contact with that life.
JonkheerAlexander Ollongren is a professor emeritus at Leiden University. He serves on the Advisory Council of METI.
Breakthrough Listen is a project to search for intelligent extraterrestrial communications in the Universe. With $100 million in funding and thousands of hours of dedicated telescope time on state-of-the-art facilities, it is the most comprehensive search for alien communications to date. The project began in January 2016, and is expected to continue for 10 years. It is a component of Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Initiatives program. The science program for Breakthrough Listen is based at Berkeley SETI Research Center, located in the Astronomy Department at the University of California, Berkeley.
Breakthrough Initiatives is a science-based program founded in 2015 and funded by Julia and Yuri Milner, also of Breakthrough Prize, to search for extraterrestrial intelligence over a span of at least 10 years. The program is divided into multiple projects. Breakthrough Listen will comprise an effort to search over 1,000,000 stars for artificial radio or laser signals. A parallel project called Breakthrough Message is an effort to create a message "representative of humanity and planet Earth". The project Breakthrough Starshot, co-founded with Mark Zuckerberg, aims to send a swarm of probes to the nearest star at about 20% the speed of light. The project Breakthrough Watch aims to identify and characterize Earth-sized, rocky planets around Alpha Centauri and other stars within 20 light years of Earth. Breakthrough plans to send a mission to Saturn's moon Enceladus, in search for life in its warm ocean, and in 2018 signed a partnership agreement with NASA for the project.
A Simple Response to an Elemental Message (ASREM) was an Interstellar Radio Message (IRM) consisting primarily of 3775 worldwide responses to this initiative's posed question; "How will our present, environmental interactions shape the future?" This transmission also features a smaller 'Honorary Mention' text archive and a series of images of Earth.
The Berkeley SETI Research Center (BSRC) conducts experiments searching for optical and electromagnetic transmissions from intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations. The center is based at the University of California, Berkeley.
Douglas A. Vakoch is an American astrobiologist, search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) researcher, psychologist, and president of METI International, a nonprofit research and educational organization devoted to transmitting intentional signals to extraterrestrial civilizations. Vakoch led METI's participation in Sónar Calling GJ 273b, which transmitted a series of interstellar messages to Luyten's Star, located 12.4 light years from Earth. Vakoch advocates ongoing transmission projects, arguing that this does not increase risks of an alien invasion as suggested by British cosmologist Stephen Hawking. He has participated in several SETI observation programs, and after sixteen years at the SETI Institute, where he was director of Interstellar Message Composition, Vakoch founded METI International. He has edited over a dozen books in SETI, astrobiology, the psychology of space exploration, and ecocriticism. He is general editor of two-book series in ecocriticism and in the intersection of space and society. Vakoch has appeared widely on television and radio as a commentator on SETI and astrobiology. He is an emeritus professor of clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication is a 2014 collection of essays edited by Douglas Vakoch and published by NASA. The book is focused on the role that the humanities and social sciences, in particular anthropology and archaeology, play in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The seventeen essays explore issues such as the evolutionary and cultural prerequisites of interstellar civilizations communicating with one another; the difficulties of understanding signs and symbols developed by vastly different societies, whether terrestrial or extraterrestrial; and issues faced by new societies making first contact with one another.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to extraterrestrial life:
| Library resources about METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) |
