Background We can search for evidence of past, or even present, life forms within our own solar system, find evidence of simple life on planets around other stars –- a planet where water could be present has recently be found –- or even detect an intelligent signal from an alien civilization. The speaker was a project scientist in the most sensitive search, Project Phoenix, ever undertaken. Sadly, no signals were detected but a new 10 year search using two of the world’s largest radio telescopes is about to begin and, during the next decade, a giant radio telescope, the Square Kilometer Array, will have the sensitivity to detect alien signals from across the galaxy.

1. Are we Alone? - The Search for Life
beyond the Earth.
Professor Ian Morison
Jodrell Bank Observatory
and Gresham College

2. Star-stuff

6. Ring
Nebula

7. M1
The
Crab
Nebula

8. Elsewhere in our own Solar
System
We could find other simple life-forms
here.

9. Canals on
Mars?

10. The Face on Mars!

13. Valleys and Volcanoes

14. Olympus Mons

15. Islands and
Channels

16. Rivulets

17. 4,000 Million Years ago

19. Viking on Mars
• Two Viking Spacecraft landed on Mars in 1976 to search
for evidence of life.

20. Spirit and Opportunity

21. Beagle II would have looked for
evidence of Life.

22. Lovell Telescope Observations
• 25/26/27/28
December
• 23/24/25 January
• Whilst Beagle 2
landing site was
visible from
Jodrell Bank

23. Waterfall Display

24. Beagle II is
found!

25. Phoenix Lander

26. Streaks down Canyon Walls

27. Salt Water Flow

32. Salt Water Flow

37. Extremophiles

38. Water at Boiling point

40. Grand Prismatic Spring
Yellowstone Park

41. Jupiter
Io
Europa
Callisto
Ganymede
4 major moons – discovered
by Galileo

42. Io

44. Jupiter’s Moon Europa

45. Breaking up of the surface
• Icebergs!

46. Water Plumes!

47. Searching for Life!

48. Finding Evidence of Simple Life
on other Planets

49. Can we see any exo-planets?
A real problem due to the
overwhelming brightness of the star
orbited by the planet.

50. Infrared observations by one of the
KECK telescopes

51. HR 8799 with
three planets

52. Indirect Detection Methods
The RADIAL VELOCITY or
DOPPLER WOBBLE method

55. 51 Pegasi b
• The first planet
detected around a
normal star.
• Period just 4 days!
• A gas giant very close
to its star.

56. Planetary Transits
Detect the transit of a
planet as it crosses
the face of the star.
This results in a
slight drop in
luminosity.
This can only work
if the orbital plane
of the planet includes
the Earth.

57. HD 209458 transit

58. HD 209458 b
• 150 light years
from Earth.
• Planet orbits
every 3.5 days.
• 4 million miles
from its star.
• Atmospheric
temperature
~2000K.

59. The Kepler Mission

62. Kepler 22b

63. European Extremely Large
Telescope

64. Evidence for Life?

65. We could detect evidence of life by
observing the spectra of the planet’s
atmosphere.

66. Study the Infra-Red Spectrum

67. What does it tell us?

69. SETI
The Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence

70. The Seminal Paper
• In 1959 Giuseppe Cocconi and Phillip Morrison published
a paper in Nature in which they pointed out that given two
telescopes of the size of the newly built 250ft Mk1 Radio
Telescope at Jodrell Bank it would, in principle, be
possible to communicate across inter-stellar distances.

71. Where to look? Locations
• They suggested that any
search should target the
nearest Sun-like stars as
these live long enough and
are hot enough to allow life
a chance to evolve on a
planet at a suitable distance
from them.
• A target list was provided including Tau Ceti and
Epsilon Eridani.

72. Where to look? Frequency
• They pointed out that the background noise (atmosphere,
Galaxy, CMB etc.) was a minimum between ~1 to 10
GHz.
• This band included the (radio) Hydrogen Line at 1.4 GHz
and the OH Lines at ~ 1.6 GHz.
• The band from 1.4 to 1.6 GHz is called the Water Hole

73. Project Ozma
• In 1960 Frank Drake and his colleagues at Green Bank,
West Virginia, used the Tatel 85ft telescope to make the
very first SETI observations in what was called Project
Ozma.

74. Project Ozma
• They were given use of a new, state of art, low noise
parametric amplifier and made observations over a 400
KHz band around the Hydrogen Line at 1420 MHz.
• They observed Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani for a total of
two months, but only detected the, then top secret, U2 Spy
plane!

75. The Wow! Signal
• In 1977 the Ohio State University Big Ear radio
telescope, which had been making SETI observations since
1973, detected a possible ET signal - so strong that the
observer wrote Wow ! in the margin of the data printout.
The changing strength of the signal perfectly matched the
beam pattern of the telescope indicating that its source was
at great distance. No real explanation exists, even today.

76. Recent and on-going searches

77. SETI at Berkeley
• Project SERENDIP ( Search for Extraterrestrial Radio
Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent
Populations!) is operated by The University of California
at Berkeley. The experiment rides “piggyback” on the
Arecibo 305m radio-telescope and has an 8M channel
receiver.

78. SETI at NASA
• The NASA SETI project developed a dual
telescope system for a targeted search, but
funding was cut in 1993 soon after it began to
operate using the 305m Arecibo Telescope.
• This project was being managed by the SETI
Institute.
• The SETI Institute then took over the receiver
systems and carryied on the targeted search
using private funding in what was called
Project Phoenix.

79. In 1998 a major upgrade to the Arecibo Telescope
was completed and plans were made to use it
again. It needs a large associated antenna to
allow it to use it’s full sensitivity. The Lovell
Telescope was ideal!

80. Their equipment
was installed at
Jodrell Bank in
June 1998 and the
first observations
made in
September.
820 sun-like stars
observed out to
~200 light-years.

81. Pioneer 10 (R.I.P)
• Pioneer 10 is now 7 Billion miles from us, well beyond
Pluto. We used it to prove that the system is fully
operational during each observing session.

82. The SETI Institute’s Allen
Telescope Array

83. Has received new funding

84. Sadly ET has not phoned home.
Should we be surprised?

85. New SETI Programs
$100 million dollar program over 10
years funded by Yuri Milner, a
Russian Oligarch

86. The Green Bank Telescope

87. The Parkes Telescope

88. Optical SETI at
Harvard

89. New Optical SETI programme using the
2.4m Automated Planet Finder Telescope

90. The Square Kilometre Array
A giant radio telescope whose global
headquarters will be at Jodrell Bank
Observatory.

92. Central Core

93. Role in SETI
• The SKA will, for
the first time, have
a realistic chance of
searching the whole
of the Milky Way
Galaxy for
evidence of
intelligent life.

94. Would a civilisation attempt to
communicate with us?

95. How does what we have learnt about
other planetary systems affect the
likelyhood of other life being present
in our galaxy?

96. Fraction of Sun-type stars
• ~73-84% of the stars in
the Milky Way are M
type – too cool
• Upper limit of 21% of
stars in the Milky Way
are like our Sun.

97. Fraction of Sun-type Stars with
Planets
• We do not yet know.
• As time goes by we will be
able to detect many more.
• There may be 10-30% of
stars with planetary systems.

98. Fraction of stars with terrestrial
planets within their solar systems
• Again we do not know – but
we are finding many solar
systems where we do NOT
believe there can be Earth-
Like planets.
• Hopefully this is because
solar systems like ours are
rather hard to find!

99. Number of Planets in a Star’s
Habitable Zone
• 8 planets; many satellites
• Earth, Mars; (Europa)

100. Found!

101. Fraction of habitable planets where
life arises
• Wild optimism: the
fraction where life arises
= 100%

102. Simple Life could be very
common.

103. How often will simple life evolve
into intelligent life?
This, in my view is the most difficult
part of this equation to estimate.

104. • Our Moon has
stabilised our
rotation axis

105. Plate
Tectonics
• Recycles CO2back
into the atmosphere

107. COMETS

108. Fraction inhabited by intelligent
beings
• One needs, we believe,
a very long time to
allow life to evolve.
• It is really difficult to
estimate how often a
planet will have a
temperate climate for
long enough.

109. Perhaps our human race is rather
special.

110. A book based on my
Gresham Lectures in
London

114. As Patrick Moore would say:
“We just don’t know”
• But this means that we cannot say that there
are not other communicating civilisations.

115. The Future of Radio SETI

116. Where should it be sited?

117. Should we have detected ET yet?
• Only two searches – SERENDIP and
Phoenix have had decent sensitivity.
– SERENDIP could detect an airport radar at 10
light years, Phoenix at ~ 200
• These have had limited coverage
– SERENDIP ~ 30% of sky
– Phoenix ~ 800 stars
• But our galaxy is 100,000 light years across!

118. Should we continue to search for
signals from ET?
As Giuseppi Cocconi and Phillip Morrison
concluded their paper in 1959:
“the probability of success is difficult to
estimate, but if we never search, the
chance of success is zero.”