Berkeley SETI Research Center
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The Berkeley SETI Research Center (BSRC) conducts experiments searching for optical and electromagnetic transmissions from intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations.
. 2017. The center is based at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
. The Berkeley SETI Research Center has several SETI searches operating at various wavelengths, from radio, through infrared, to visible light. These include
SERENDIP SERENDIP (Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations) is a Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program originated by the Berkeley SETI Research Center at the University of California, Berke ...
, SEVENDIP, NIROSETI,
Breakthrough Listen Breakthrough Listen is a project to search for intelligent extraterrestrial communications in the Universe. With $100 million in funding and thousands of hours of dedicated telescope time on state-of-the-art facilities, it is the most comprehensi ...
, and SETI@home. The research center is also involved in the development of new telescopes and instrumentation. The Berkeley SETI Research Center is independent of, but collaborates with, researchers at the
SETI Institute The SETI Institute is a not-for-profit research organization incorporated in 1984 whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to use this knowledge to inspire and guide present and futu ...
. No unambiguous signals from extraterrestrial intelligence have been found.


Breakthrough Listen

The Berkeley SETI Research Center also hosts the Breakthrough Listen program, which is a ten-year initiative with $100 million funding begun in July 2015 to actively search for intelligent extraterrestrial communications in the universe, in a substantially expanded way, using resources that had not previously been extensively used for the purpose. It has been described as the most comprehensive search for alien communications to date. Announced in July 2015, the project is observing for thousands of hours every year on two major radio telescopes, the
Green Bank Observatory The Green Bank Observatory (previously National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Green Bank) is an astronomical observatory located in the National Radio Quiet Zone in Green Bank, West Virginia, U.S. It is the operator of the Robert C. Byrd Green Ba ...
in West Virginia, the
Parkes Observatory Parkes Observatory is a radio astronomy observatory, located north of the town of Parkes, New South Wales, Australia. It hosts Murriyang, the 64 m CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope also known as "The Dish", along with two smaller radio telescopes ...
in
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
, and the
Automated Planet Finder The Automated Planet Finder (APF) Telescope a.k.a. Rocky Planet Finder, is a fully robotic 2.4-meter optical telescope at Lick Observatory, situated on the summit of Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose, California, USA.Steven S. Vogt et al., APF - T ...
telescope.


SETI@home

The center also created the SETI@home, an Internet-based public
volunteer computing Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which people donate their computers' unused resources to a research-oriented project, and sometimes in exchange for credit points. The fundamental idea behind it is that a modern desktop co ...
project employing the
BOINC The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC, pronounced – rhymes with "oink") is an open-source middleware system for volunteer computing (a type of distributed computing). Developed originally to support SETI@home, it beca ...
software platform, hosted by their
Space Sciences Laboratory The Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) is an Organized Research Unit (ORU) of the University of California, Berkeley. Founded in 1959, the laboratory is located in the Berkeley Hills above the university campus. It has developed and continues t ...
. Its purpose is to analyze radio data from
radio telescopes A radio telescope is a specialized antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky. Radio telescopes are the main observing instrument used in radio astronomy, which studies the radio frequency p ...
for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.


SERENDIP

The SERENDIP program takes advantage of ongoing "mainstream"
radio telescope A radio telescope is a specialized antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky. Radio telescopes are the main observing instrument used in radio astronomy, which studies the radio frequency ...
observations and analyzes deep space radio telescope data that it obtains while other
astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...
s are using the telescope. SERENDIP observations have been conducted at frequencies between 400 MHz and 5
GHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one he ...
, with most observations near the so-called Cosmic Water Hole (1.42 GHz (21 cm) neutral
hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-to ...
and 1.66 GHz
hydroxyl In chemistry, a hydroxy or hydroxyl group is a functional group with the chemical formula and composed of one oxygen atom covalently bonded to one hydrogen atom. In organic chemistry, alcohols and carboxylic acids contain one or more hydrox ...
transitions).


SEVENDIP

SEVENDIP, which stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Visible Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations, was a project using visible wavelengths to search for
extraterrestrial life Extraterrestrial life, colloquially referred to as alien life, is life that may occur outside Earth and which did not originate on Earth. No extraterrestrial life has yet been conclusively detected, although efforts are underway. Such life might ...
's intelligent signals from outer space.


NIROSETI

The NIROSETI (Near-InfraRed Optical Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program searches for artificial signals in the optical ( visible) and
near infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from arou ...
(NIR) wavebands of the
electromagnetic spectrum The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of frequencies (the spectrum) of electromagnetic radiation and their respective wavelengths and photon energies. The electromagnetic spectrum covers electromagnetic waves with frequencies ranging fro ...
. The instrument saw its first light on 15 March 2015 and was commissioned in January 2016. The NIROSETI instrument employs a new generation of near-infrared (900 to 1700 nm) detectors, cooled at -25 °C, that have a high speed response (>1 GHz) and gain comparable to photomultiplier tubes, while also producing very low noise, and significantly reducing false positives. and focuses on detecting short (nanosecond) pulsed laser emissions. The NIROSETI instrument is also being used to study variability of very short natural near-infrared transient phenomena.


See also


References


External links


Berkeley SETI Research Center Highlights
5 min video by Berkeley University at YouTube.
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at Home (SETI@Home)Stephen Hawking and Russian tycoon Yuri Milner kick off new search for E.T.
$100 million funding to search star catalogue using SETI@home software, July 2015. {{DEFAULTSORT:Seti Search for extraterrestrial intelligence Astrobiology University of California, Berkeley Radio astronomy Research institutes in the San Francisco Bay Area