Is Anybody Out There?
After more than three years of anticipation, Halo: Reach has finally hit the Xbox 360 and I’m now free to wage war against the evil coalition of alien forces know as The Covenant.
If you’re a Halo addict like me, you can’t help but spend the couple minutes a day you AREN’T playing Halo wondering about alien civilizations: Would they be friendly? Would they engage us in an intergalactic war of Halo-esque proportions? Are they so far away that we could never hope to communicate with them?
This month marks the 60th anniversary of the first modern experiment in the search for extraterrestrial life. In September 1960, Cornell University Astronomer Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at the stars and began searching for electromagnetic signals from distant civilizations. Later, Drake developed the Drake Equation , a formula for estimating the number of potential intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way and founded the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute
Over the last 60 years, SETI hasn’t heard from any civilizations, although the “WOW” signal remains of interest to those in the field. The signal was detected by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman in 1977, at Ohio State University’s The Big Ear radio telescope. For 72 seconds, the telescope observed a signal that had the hallmarks of being alien in origin. And then it was gone, never to be heard from again.
Ray Villard recently wrote an article for Discovery News about what the future may or may not hold for SETI. It’s definitely an intriguing read. Ray is a former planetarium director at the Maryland Science Center, astronomy professor, and current Public information Office at the Baltimore Space Telescope Science Institute.
Famed cosmologist and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking thinks alien life is likely, but in his recent Discovery Channel miniseries “Into the Universe” suggested Earth lay low . After all, who knows what contact with an alien civilization could mean for humanity? It could be messy.
Hawking’s opinion isn’t unanimous in the scientific community. In this video , Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium, questions Hawking’s conclusions.
Hopefully Hawking is being overly pessimistic. I mean, I’m pretty good at Halo, but I’d rather not fight an intergalactic war.
