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The Optical SETI
Resource For Planet Earth
Welcome to this Web site, the first on the World Wide Web
dedicated to promoting the Optical Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Here
you will find a different approach to The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
The Optical Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence, otherwise known as Optical SETI
(OSETI), seeks to detect pulsed and continuous wave laser beacons signals in the visible
and infrared spectrums. The optical approach to SETI using continuous wave laser
beacons was first proposed by Schwartz and Townes in 1961, one
year after the laser was invented and two years after Cocconi and
Morrison proposed the microwave approach to SETI.
The Columbus Optical SETI (COSETI) Observatory is a
pioneering prototype observatory, the first in North America, located in Bexley, Ohio, USA, just four miles from downtown Columbus
and close to Port Columbus International Airport. Bexley is
the place made famous by syndicated columnist and best selling author Bob Greene. The aperture size of the
telescope employed by the observatory is 10" (25.4 cm) -- somewhat smaller than those
huge microwave radio dishes we are so used to seeing in TV programs and movies about
ETIs! The COSETI Observatory has been designed to detect both attention-getting
continuous wave and pulsed laser beacon signals.
Beginning in the summer of 1990, Optical SETI was
promoted via postings to Internet newsgroups and from October 1991 till December 1997,
this was assisted by a Bulletin Board System (BBS). This Web site was first launched
in April 1996 on CompuServe, followed shortly by two other associated linked sites on
Sprynet. These three Web sites were consolidated and ported over to Netwalk under
the domain name www.coseti.org in August 1997, from
which time it has grown substantially. The COSETI Observatory Web site contains an
extensive amount of documentation about Optical SETI -- mainly material that has been
produced since the summer of 1990, when Stuart Kingsley first started his Optical SETI
research activities. The COSETI Web site is also the means by which the observatory
will distribute observational data. It is intended that real-time data will be put
out over the Internet. Later, remote control of the observatory over the Internet
may become possible. In the meantime, activities here may be monitored, from time to
time, via several WebCams.
If you have been knowledgeable about SETI for some time
or have seen the movie Contact (the reader is highly recommended
to see this wonderful film), you will be aware that until late summer of 1998, little or
nothing had been said by the "official" Microwave SETI (MSETI) community to
indicate that there was indeed a sensible optical approach to SETI. This Web site
has sought to redress this oversight and show that not only is OSETI a viable scientific
endeavor, but that it is more likely that ETIs would use lasers for their interstellar
SETI-type free-space communications than radiowaves. These very technically
sophisticated civilizations, if limited to Electromagnetic SETI and the speed of light --
an assumption that is obviously debatable, would employ narrow targeted beams rather
than a quasi-broadcast approach which is so energy inefficient. Unfortunately, the
optical approach to SETI, for reasons that are described herein and which are largely due
to the Project Cyclops Report, has suffered over 25 years
of neglect, particularly in the United States. Find out why the pioneering work on
observational Optical SETI was left to the Soviet astrophysicists, Shvartsman and
Beskin.
In 1998, when
main-stream opposition to Optical SETI stopped, it was suggested to the
media that the reason there wasn't a major American Optical SETI program
during the past quarter of a century, was that only recently has the
technology matured sufficiently to undertake this type of SETI
research. This is revisionist history and is simply not true.
To see the proof of this statement, click here.
For the past quarter of a century, popular books and
articles about SETI have said little if anything about the benefits of lasers for
free-space interstellar communications during a time when we terrenes have been developing
such technology for more down-to-earth applications. This period of time coincides
almost exactly with the duration of my career in photonics since starting my post-graduate
studies in Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University College London, England. The
COSETI Observatory has consistently maintained that the strong opposition to Optical SETI
was scientifically illogical, and clearly, this Web site has helped other SETI scientists
to see the light; be it ultraviolet, visible or infrared! SETI on planet Earth has
suffered from the "cult of personality", and up to 1998, politics have prevented
a more open discussion of its efficacy. Of course, this move to the optical spectrum
was really inevitable if one believed that ETI signals would not be found in the microwave
spectrum. A negative result for the microwave search was bound to cause a
reexamination of the microwave rationale for SETI.
The question has always been very basic -- "Would
ETIs use hot photons (visible or infrared) or warm, fuzzy ones (microwaves) and would they
have the advanced technical skills available to fully make use of the very high gain
potential of laser transmitters?". Within these pages I have aimed to prove
that "hot photons" are far superior for wideband interstellar
communications. By this means, I hoped to encourage other professional and amateur
scientists to conduct their own OSETI research. In 1999, the COSETI Observatory
launched an associated E-Commerce site to assist others in constructing
their own Optical SETI observatories. In 2000, two other associated
new Web sites were started, The Optical
SETI Network and The Fourth
Planet, the latter to promote the Manned Exploration of Mars. I
also have a personal Web site at www.stuartkingsley.com,
which provides access to all sites for which I have some association.
Please drop me a line if you have or are about
to start your own OSETI research. Contributions of OSETI articles and data to this
web site from scientists, engineers and enthusiasts are requested. Because Optical
SETI is beginning to become very fashionable, members of the print and electronic media
are now giving greater exposure to this endeavor. If you are from the media and
undertaking background research on this topic, you can reach me via my CONTACT INFORMATION page. Please take your time in
reviewing this site for both information about the COSETI Observatory and for links to
other Optical SETI Web sites.
As mentioned above, during the summer of 1998, a major
change took place within the SETI establishment. This came after a period in which
opposition to Optical SETI appeared to be softening. The SETI
Institute and The Planetary Society now consider Optical SETI
to be a viable approach, with the major activity being directed at detecting pulsed laser
beacons. Even before the American SETI community came around to support OSETI,
various groups in Australia had commenced their own research
activities. The pulsed beacon approach is based mainly on the ideas of photonics
pioneer Monte Ross, who at this time has still not
been properly recognized for his contributions to this field.
The Director of the COSETI Observatory has arranged and
chaired for SPIE (The International Society for Optical
Engineering), two international conferences on Optical SETI. A third
conference, the largest so far, is scheduled for January 2001, with two
preview lectures in the United Kingdom on November
6 and November 7. This OSETI III conference
will mark the 40th anniversary of
Optical SETI, and the new Millennium we see the start of a new Optical SETI age. It
is confidently expected that by the year 2005, most SETI activities (by shear numbers and
level of funding) on this planet will be of the optical kind! Documentation relating
to the proceedings of the OSETI I and OSETI
II conferences and a "call for papers" for the OSETI III conference, may be found on this site. RealAudio
files from the first and second conferences are also available for review on this
site. Stuart Kingsley is also the chairman of The SETI League's
new Optical SETI Committee and a board member of The Laser Museum
& Space Signal Observatory (LSSO).
The year 2005 is also about the time that NASA
was originally scheduled to launch the Next Generation
of Space Telescope (NGST). Mankind should be planning now for space telescopes
to be equipped with instrumentation to undertake OSETI observations in the infrared and
ultraviolet regions of the spectrum, for which the earth's atmosphere is not transparent.
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) could also be
retrofitted for Optical SETI. Look out for a link here to be posted in
2001, concerning a petition to the NASA Administrator,
for serious consideration to be given to instrumenting the HST and NGST for
both monochromatic and pulsed beacon OSETI. Ground-based Optical SETI observatories
may not discover a laser signal for the simple reason that the atmosphere is opaque to the
interstellar laser wavelengths employed by ETIs. If ETIs are benign and do not wish
to destabilize the targeted civilization, they may use the target's atmosphere as a
"safety blanket". This would ensure that the discovery of the fact by the
receiving civilization that it is "not alone" is delayed until that society is
more mature and has space-based observatories. Of course, high
altitude balloon-based telescopes could also extend our window through the
optical part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Please note that this Web site and the activities of the
COSETI Observatory are funded by the income from my professional photonics day job and
that I have no official (translation -- paid) position with the SETI community. For
the moment I am just a SETI enthusiast! I say this as a way of encouragement to
young people who often email me to inquire as to "How they can
get into SETI". A new idea or an old idea (as in this case) that has
languished around for some time often needs a champion -- a person that will provide a
little nurturing before the idea gains acceptance in the wider community. This has
been one such occasion. Perhaps now we will have success in mankind's search for the
answer to that ultimate question "Are we alone?". I have little doubt that
in time it will be discovered that we are just one of many intelligent species within our
own galaxy. Whether any of these species uses a technology as crude and slow as
"free-space interstellar laser communications" is quite another question and one
that will be hotly debated for years to come.
For the latest popular media publications
about Optical SETI, see the November 2000 issue of Astronomy Now,
the December 1998 and June
1999 issues of Sky & Telescope, the August 30, 1999 issue of Time
Magazine and the September 1999 issue of the Smithsonian
Air & Space Magazine. A briefer version of the June 1999
Sky
and Telescope article may be found in the Encyclopedia
Britannica. Also see recent issues of The
Planetary Society's Bioastronomy
News and the SETI Institute's SETI News.
Click here for a more extensive list of media
publications about Optical SETI and The COSETI Observatory.
Dr. Stuart A. Kingsley
Director, The Columbus Optical SETI Observatory
Revised: October 15, 2000 |
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