Searching for extraterrestrial intelligence : SETI past, present, and future / H. Paul Shuch, editor.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Shuch, H. Paul.

Series:

Frontiers collection.

The frontiers collection, 1612-3018

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Extraterrestrial anthropology--Research--History.

Extraterrestrial anthropology.

Life on other planets.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (541 p.)

Edition:

1st ed. 2011.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; Heidelberg : Springer-Verlag, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book is a collection of essays written by the very scientists and engineers who have led, and continue to lead, the scientific quest known as SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Divided into three parts, the first section, ‘The Spirit of SETI Past’, written by the surviving pioneers of this then emerging discipline, reviews the major projects undertaken during the first 50 years of SETI science and the results of that research. In the second section, ‘The Spirit of SETI Present’, the present-day science and technology is discussed in detail, providing the technical background to contemporary SETI instruments, experiments, and analytical techniques, including the processing of the received signals to extract potential alien communications. In the third and final section, ‘The Spirit of SETI Future’, the book looks ahead to the possible directions that SETI will take in the next 50 years, addressing such important topics as interstellar message construction, the risks and assumptions of interstellar communications, when we might make contact, what aliens might look like and what is likely to happen in the aftermath of such a contact.

Contents:

Dedication

Foreword: Looking Back

Preface

Part I: The Spirit of SETI Past

1 A half-century of SETI science

2 Project Ozma: The birth of observational SETI

3 Project Cyclops: The greatest radio telescope never built

4 “Wow!”, A tantalizing candidate

5 SETI: The NASA years

6 From HRMS to Phoenix: Up from the ashes

7 Seeking SERENDIP: The Berkeley SETI Program

8 Millions and billions of channels

Part II: The Spirit of SETI Present

9 ATA: A cyclops for the 21st century

10 Optical SETI: Moving toward the light

11 Distributed processing of SETI data

12 Project Argus: Pursuing amateur all-sky SETI

13 Gravitational lensing extends SETI range

14 Detection algorithms: FFT vs. KLT

15 Implementing the KLT

16 A sentry on the Universe

17 Pondering the Fermi Paradox

Part III: The Spirit of SETI Future

18 Focusing the Galactic internet

19 SETI in science fiction

20 What’s past is prologue: Future messages of cosmic evolution

21 METI: Messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence

22 A contrarian perspective on altruism

23 Where the L are we?

24 What will they look like?

25 Being technological

26 After contact, then what? Epilogue Hungarians as Martians: The truth behind the legend

Afterword Looking forward

Index.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-283-08842-8

9786613088420

3-642-13196-4

OCLC:

710113294