Now that NASA’s Kepler space telescope has identified 1,235 possible planets around stars in our galaxy, astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, are aiming a West Virginia radio telescope at the most Earth-like of these worlds to see if they can detect signals from an advanced civilization.
The search began on Saturday, May 8, 2011 when the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope – the largest steerable radio telescope in the world – dedicated an hour to eight stars with possible planets. Once UC Berkeley astronomers acquire 24 hours of data on a total of 86 Earth-like planets, they’ll initiate a coarse analysis and then, in about two months, ask an estimated 1 million SETI@home users to conduct a more detailed analysis on their home computers, writes Robert Sanders of UC Berekley with greater details.
Ray Villard, writing at Discovery News, has an interesting take on the Kepler spacecraft data collection as a means to detect alien life.
The search began on Saturday, May 8, 2011 when the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope – the largest steerable radio telescope in the world – dedicated an hour to eight stars with possible planets. Once UC Berkeley astronomers acquire 24 hours of data on a total of 86 Earth-like planets, they’ll initiate a coarse analysis and then, in about two months, ask an estimated 1 million SETI@home users to conduct a more detailed analysis on their home computers, writes Robert Sanders of UC Berekley with greater details.
Ray Villard, writing at Discovery News, has an interesting take on the Kepler spacecraft data collection as a means to detect alien life.
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