SETI and Astrobiology in Australia



The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence has received Planetary Society support for many years. The Society has a web page devoted to this topic and you can see "live" results of the Society sponsored Project BETA.

Join SETI@home - use your PC's idle time to look for signals from ET


IF a SETI detection occurs these links are likely to get very busy:

• the "SETI Protocol" - Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence
• How to Respond to a SETI Detection (88K PDF) by Ray Norris
• International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Permanent SETI Study Group (established in 2001) - webmaster Paul Shuch from SETI League.
• Protocols
• Rio Scale
• Members
• SETI: Post-Detection Science and Technology (proposed)

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SETI in Australia

For links to Australian and New Zealand astrobiologists see  Astrobiology Australasia and the Australian Centre for Astrobiology. Quantum fluctuations and life by Paul Davies from ACA.


The SETI Australia Centre is at the University of Western Sydney, Campbelltown. They have an active search program using the Parkes Radio Telescope and offer academic and public courses related to bioastronomy and astrophysics. They also have an exciting high school package that covers physics, chemistry, microbiology, biology, astronomy and geology (high school teachers take note). UWS is carrying out pioneering work on Optical SETI (link to another site doing this work). During 1997 Carol Oliver from UWS sent us some notes about the Australian SETI project - please consider joining SETI Australia or sponsoring this exciting project.

UWS organised the International SETI Conference at its campus in January 1998. Scientists from 11 countries attended, including SETI pioneer Frank Drake. No announcements of a success but the participants took part in a public relations workshop to help them better deal with the great day - which might not be far away. One sobering estimate from Ray Norris (CSIRO) was that the most probable technological age difference between us and and an ETI is 1.8 billion years! (this is based simply on the typical age of Sun-like stars and does not depend on the actual number of ETI "civilisations" - except that it is a number greater than zero). See the member's comments page for Ray's ideas about life in space (December 1996).

SETI League has some photos of the conference

The Conference Proceedings will be published soon.

The Australia Day (Jan 26 1998) issue of The Sydney Morning Herald had a feature article on the Conference.

The University of NSW has a general education course "Are we alone?"

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SETI on the Moon

See also Institute of Space and Astronautical Science
email: terakiATRD.TKSC.NASDA.GO.JP
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SETI/ASTROBIOLOGY LINKS

(most have further links):
• Seti UNIVERSE FORUMS
• New Scientist 4 Sep 06: Top 10: Controversial pieces of evidence for extraterrestrial life
• Reports on Progress in Physics: Astrophysical and astrochemical insights into the origin of life (Abstract + full article is free!) - this is a milestone study + Quantum fluctuations and life by Paul Davies
• 13 Jun 02 Cosmic Ancestry: Two New Astrobiology Journals -- Astrobiology and International Journal of Astrobiology.
• Australian Centre for Astrobiology.
• Astrobiology Australasia - resources
• Allen Tough's Invitation to ETI including an article by Paul Davies.
• Exoscience News
• New Scientist article Life is ... (13 June 1998)
• The Planetary Society SETI links page.
• The Abundance of Life-Bearing Planets by Carl Sagan (1995)
• New Scientist article Survivors from Mars by Paul Davies and the new book 'The Fifth Miracle'
• Planetary Report article "Swapping Rocks" - how microbes might hitch a ride between planets.
• SETI Institute - a non-profit research organisation based in California and dedicated to SETI-related research. The Institute runs the Project Phoenix program. There are numerous resources about SETI, including an explanation of the Drake Equation. Seth Shostak from the SETI Institute has recently published a book "Sharing the Universe: the quest for extraterrestrial life".
Parkes Telescope used by the SETI institute during Project Phoenix.
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• SERENDIP at the University of California Berkeley (Dan Werthimer and Geoff Marcy)
• Paul Horowitz's SETI site - including a  new optical SETI program
• The SETI League encourages participatory science. Hundreds of members around the world operate "backyard" radio telescopes or help in other ways. The League coordinates the search by its members, provides advice about equipment and has PC shareware for automating the search. Did you know that many of these backyard telescopes have the same sensitivity as the radio telescopes used in the first SETI searches nearly thirty years ago? Through its widely distributed resources this group has a very good chance of making a discovery.
• Paddy's SETI page including the "Drake Equation"
• SETIQuest Magazine a quarterly magazine dedicated to SETI and bioastronomy. Informative articles by scienctists participating in SETI. "Publications Watch" is a regular section with very informative reviews of articles from Science, Nature, Icarus and other eminent publications. Will you be a subscriber when the historic discovery is made? (They could be swamped with subscription requests after the event!)

Update: September 1998: Unfortunately publication of the magazine has been suspended. Publisher Carl Helmers has written to subscribers and explains that "SETIQuest costs many times incoming cash flow to produce and deliver each issue". However, keep watching the SETIQUest website for SETI news and information.
• Sky and Telescope SETI section - Drake Equation and much more.
• San Francisco State University Planet Search Program with Dr Paul Butler.
• The Astrobiology Web - many links
• NASA's site Exploration of Neighbouring Planetary Systems and Project Kepler
• The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia- Observatoire de Paris - latest news
• NASA's Astrobiology Workshop Final Report, December 1996.
• NASA's Ames Research Astrochemistry Lab
• Panspermia - British astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe
• Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute "Asteroids, Comets, and Meterorites: Their Intimate Relation with Life on Earth" by Stephen P. Broker (course notes)
• SETI Essays from the National Institute of Discovery Science
• Comment on the evolution of high intelligence
• Mark Elowitz's Exobiology/SETI page.
• Science@NASA The Sagan Criteria for Life Revisited
• Scientific American: Aliens - where are they?, The Search for Extreme Life - from the July 2000 issue.
• Scientific American: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life by Carl Sagan, 1997.
• University of Oregon has an online astronomy course with lectures on astrobiology.
• Univeristy of Washington (Seattle) - Center for Astrobiology and Early Evolution.
• 3 Feb 05 New website: SETI Universe.
• Yahoo's SETI links (part of the "paranormal phenomena" category!)
• 20 Jan 07 Science:  Astrobiology Fights for Its Life - A decade after NASA pledged to create a robust program to find and understand life in the universe, researchers face a debilitating budget crunch and skepticism within their own agency.
• 9 Jun 07 The Australian: ACA closure 'short-sighted' - NASA's Australian-born astronaut Andy Thomas has joined international condemnation of the decision to shut down the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University in Sydney.
• 9 Nov 07 Space.com: SETI: Is It Worth It?
• 18 Jan 08 UT: Has a Signal from ET Really Been Detected? Bad Astronomy: No alien signal
• 20 Sep 08 NewSci ($): The alien hunter - Are we alone in the universe? Astronomer Seth Shostak has dedicated his career to trying to find out, with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project.
• 25 Apr 10 WSJ: Is Anybody Out There? by Paul Davies - based on the book The Eerie Silence: Are we Alone in the Universe - a great introduction to astrobiology and SETI
• 18 Jan 12 BBC: Alien hunters: What if ET ever phones our home?

An initiative of The Planetary Society Australian Volunteer Coordinators
Maintained by Michael Paine (home page) : email.