15 Oct Are aliens real? Do aliens exist? NASA awards grant to look for techno-signatures

Adam Frank, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, has received a grant from NASA that will enable him to begin to answer these questions. The grant will fund his study of techno-signatures—detectable signs of past or present technology used on other planets. This is the first NASA non-radio techno-signature grant ever awarded and represents an exciting new direction for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The grant will allow Frank, along with collaborators Jacob-Haqq Misra from the international non-profit organization Blue Marble Space, Manasvi Lingam from the Florida Institute of Technology, Avi Loeb from Harvard University, and Jason Wright from Pennsylvania State University, to produce the first entries in an online techno-signature library.

 

A civilization, by nature, will need to find a way to produce energy, and, Frank says, “there are only so many forms of energy in the universe. Aliens are not magic. SETI has always faced the challenge of figuring out where to look,” Frank says. “Which stars do you point your telescope at and look for signals? Now we know where to look. We have thousands of exoplanets including planets in the habitable zone where life can form. The game has changed.”

Read the full article at: www.rochester.edu