Two New Articles

http://www.seti.org/feature/weird-seti

The article, "Weird SETI" by Seth Shostak discusses the different approaches to contact extraterrestrial intelligence other than radio. The article includes neutrinos which are a much more expensive way to communicate. It also mentions entangled particles as well as searching for gravity waves. "Weird SETI" was interesting because we have focused on FM radio waves as way to communicate so I enjoyed learning about new methods of contacting aliens.

http://www.seti.org/Page.aspx?pid=1374

"Celebrating IYA: 400 Years After Galileo" by Edna DeVore is about celebrating the first astronomical telescope. Galileo created his telescope in August 1609. Without the telescope, we would not be where we are today in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Summaries for Readings due September 10

The article "Searching for Interstellar Communications" by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison discusses what radio frequencies we should use in order to communicate interstellar. On these frequencies, the authors think we should include prime numbers or other simple mathematical patterns. It also talks about how we would receive an answer. According to this article, it would years to receive an answer since stars are light years away.

"What It Was Like Before Ozma" by Louis Berman includes many of the historic scientists we talked about in class such as Karl Gauss, Joseph von Littrow, and Charles Cros and their ideas of showing other intelligence that we occupy Earth.  Most of the ideas sound ridiculous today. The person I found most interesting in this article was Grote Reber who built a huge radio dish in his backyard in hopes of communicating with other intelligence.

Rachel Edgar Physics 103

http://www.good.is/post/why-aliens-wont-abduct-you/

The author, Seth Shostak, of this article is saying that no one has been abducted by aliens. Or at least the two percent of Americans that have claimed to have been. His argument is that there would be more physical evidence of these abductions than just the stories of the individuals who claimed to have been taken away by aliens. Most of the abductees stories have to deal with the aliens removing eggs or sperm because of reproduction problems of their race. The author says that there is no logic to these stories because we do not know how aliens reproduce. 

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/090716-seti-alien-appearance.html

The article "What Will Aliens Really Look Like" by Seth Shostak discusses how aliens would really appear. Shostak argues that aliens would not look like those we see on TV or in movies. Those Hollywood aliens look too much like us. Instead, he suspects that they'll look like machines.