SETI Opens All Data and Coding to the Public – “The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) just announced that it is releasing all information to the public. SETIQuest.org was launched on Wednesday to facilitate the release and help coordinate an ‘army of citizen scientists’ to help search for anomalies in interstellar microwave patterns,” reports Ole Ole Olson for NEWS JUNKIE POST.

The NewScientist reports, “SETIQuest is the product of astronomer Jill Tarter’s TED Prize wish. After being awarded the TED Prize last year, Tarter was given the opportunity to make a single wish before an auditorium full of the top names in technology and design. Tarter wished that they would “empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company”.

With SETIQuest, Tarter and TED are making that happen. The website will make vast amounts of SETI data available to the public for the first time. It will also publish the SETI Institute’s signal-detection algorithm as open source code, inviting brilliant coders and amateur techies to make it even better.”

According to the SETIQuest website, “Searching the universe for an intelligent signal is a huge challenge that we at the SETI Institute have been working towards for the past 25 years. However, in 2009, when Jill Tarter received a TED prize and a chance to make “a wish to change the world”, we had the opportunity to move the search to the next level.

Of all scientific explorations, it seems pretty obvious that SETI should be global and involve all humanity. The answer to the old, universal, human question “Are we alone?” impacts all of us. The detection of another technological civilization will recalibrate our place in the cosmos, recalibrate who we are, and potentially trivialize the differences among human Earthlings and thereby extend our future longevity.

SetiQuest is a community involvement that will lead to a significant improvement in our ability to search for other intelligent civilizations in the cosmos, and in the process, to use SETI to change the world.”

“There has been avid speculation for centuries as to the existence of alien life. Most of this can easily be dismissed as hoaxes, direct lies, hallucinations, or mental instability, yet it absolutely cannot be definitively proven that life does not exist on other worlds,” reports Olson. “So this question has been left mainly to the realm of philosophy. Though it still cannot be proven either way, we can examine the evidence and make certain conclusions that can sustain the very strong probability that alien life exists. With luck, this new SETI initiative will be able to confirm what most of us already suspect, that we are indeed not alone in the universe.”

Suggestive Data that Mars once contained Life

“The first evidence came from a Martian rock that NASA released evidence for on 06 Aug 1996. This rock, known as the SNC meteorite had been ejected into space by an asteroid impact on Mars about 15 million years ago, and orbited the sun until it impacted with Antarctica about 13,000 years ago,” reports Olson. “This rock contained fossilized micro-organisms. Not absolute evidence, but decent. Recent data collected by the twin rovers currently operating exceptionally (and well beyond their original scope) from rocks on Mars itself shows mounting evidence that life on Mars was probable in the past.”

Mathematical Probability

“We are living in a star system with less than a dozen planets. Now, assuming that life does not exist elsewhere in our solar system (to do this, we must discard the potential on Mars, Titan, Europa, Venus, etc.), that leaves us in say a 1 in 10 chance (rough constant, but for arguments sake, lets say this is a general value),” reports Olson. “Consider that astronomers currently estimate 200 billion star systems in our Milky Way Galaxy (a good ballpark figure), and a minimum of 200 billion galaxies in the known universe (probably a very conservative estimate), we have 40 sextillion (40 billion billion, or 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) star systems in the known galaxy. With such radically gargantuan sized numbers like this, how would it be that this is the only planet in the entire universe to have life on it? To say so is ridiculous and blind.”

The Earth was changed by Life itself

“In Planetary science terms, our world is composed of the Lithosphere (rock), Hydrosphere (all water), Atmosphere (all gasses), and a 4th part, the Biosphere (all life). Though many naysayers contend the Earth is precisely the perfect distance from the sun, orbital and revolutionary frequencies, contains a single light moon, etc. for life to exist, they perpetually ignore the fact that life itself has changed the conditions on this planet,” reports Olson. “Look at the atmosphere. On Mars and Venus (our closest neighbors, both ‘terrestrial’ planets, both similar in size and composition) the atmosphere is mostly CO2 (Carbon Dioxide). Doesn’t it seem a bit strange that ours is mostly Nitrogen with strong showing by oxygen?”

“Taking these 3 arguments, it becomes well established that life is indeed highly probable outside Earth (ie. alien life), even with the lack of direct evidence today,” reports Olson. “The impact of SetiQuest on this search will be determined in the next few years.”

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