Background detail about the real-life S.E.T.I. project.
Pictures from [Future's End] unless otherwise stated.
Since the beginning of civilisation, people have been wondering, sometimes with fanatical zeal, whether we are alone in the universe or whether there is intelligent life somewhere. Many of the ancient Greek philsopher-scientists (this is a technical term employed by historians including Classicists to mean Anaximenes, Anaximander, Hipparchus and others of that ilk) of the Classical and Hellenic periods debated the question, and most favoured the notion that the Earth was just one of many abodes of life throughout the universe, but trying to make contact with any inhabitants of far-flung worlds were rarely seriously considered and, of course, in that period, no equipment existed or could be invented that would turn such a search. into practice.
In the 1820s, the German scientist Karl Friedrich Gauss suggested that humankind should announce its presence to the supposed inhabitants of the Moon. The method he had in mind was to cut swathes in the Siberian forest, for he wanted to remove trees in such a way that they formed a perfect right-angle triangle and demonstrated Pythagoras' Theorem, so that it could be seen from the Moon and the Moon's inhabitants realise that the people on Earth were intelligent and decide to contact Earth. Other proposals centred on digging large, unnaturally circular trenches in the Sahara Desert, filling them with kerosene and setting them alight so that the conflagration could be seen from the Moon.
In the late 20th century, with the development of radio telescopes and similar equipment, scientists converged upon the basic idea of scanning the sky and "listening" for non-random patterns of electromagnetic emissions such as radio or television waves which it is thought would detect another possible intelligent civilisation somewhere else in the universe.
In 1877, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli observed Mars during ne of that planet's biannual passes by Earth. He saw what looked like straight lines on the surface. In the USA, Percival Lowell took up the hunt, convinced that the lines were canala built by a Martian civilisation. He ceaselessly produced maps of these curious features. The maps, however, were never repeats of one another, and other astronomers became suspicious that the canals were illusory features created by defects in the telescopes. As better telescopes were manufactured, the canals began to disappear from view and the real surface features were seen for the first time.
Mars, photography by the later Hubble Space Telescope
In 1924, the United States military monitored Mars for radio signals. They even assigned a code expert, in case the Martians were transmitting coded messages. Nothing was detected, except for some distinctly terrestrial interference from electrical machinery.
In 1932, Karl Jansky made the first unmistakable detection of radio emission from space. In 1938, Grote Reber mapped the sky at a frequency of 160MHz. Both men detected nothing but natural emissions.
Venus, via much later radar
Following World War II, during which radio technology advanced substantially because of the development of radar, scientists commenced to consider its application seriously with regard to astronomy. In 1959, Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison first suggested in a key journal that alien signals should be searched for using radio telescopes, and accordingly in 1960 Dr Frank Drake conducted the first search, targetting two sun-like stars, namely Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti. In this way, the modern S.E.T.I. era (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) was ushered in.
Drake also formulated the Drake Equation to calculate the chances of finding planets capable of supporting intelligent extra-terrestrial life. See Page 4 for the formula and Gene Roddenberry's use of it in Star Trek.
By the time of Drake's first search, radio was being widely used for communication on Earth, and it seemed reasonable to assume that extra-terrestrials would do the same. As radio waves would leak out into space, a sufficiently sensitive radio telescope should be able to pick up these emissions, thereby confirming the present of intelligent extra-terrestrials.
During the latter 20th century, astronomers experienced a number of false alarms. One of the most intriguing false alarms led to the discovery of velestial objects known as pulsars. Pulsars are spheres, about 15 kilometres in diameter, made of particles called neutrons. The pulsars spin many times a second, giving out radio waves in pulses. Using a radio telescope at Cambridge University, Jocelyn Bell discovered the first one. The peculiarity of the way it was pulsing on and off (a trait displayed by no other celestial object) led her to label it LGM-1. "LGM" stood for Little Green Man.
part of the S.E.T.I. that Rain Robinson works in, TOSTFF scans, I do not think these shots occur in the aired episode of [Future's End]
NASA briefly joined in S.E.T.I. efforts at a low level in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some of these efforts included Project Orion, the Microwave Observing Project, the High Resolution Microwave Survey, and Toward Other Planetary Systems. Programmes included the formulation of S.E.T.I. greetings designed to be understood by intelligent extra-terrestrials, and including drawings of homo sapiens, a DNA molecule which should be recognisable as it is the basis of life, and a binary message plus greetings in many Earth languages.
part of the S.E.T.I. message as seen on Voyager's bridge viewscreen
In 1992, NASA initiated a formal, more intensive, S.E.T.I. program but less than a year later the government cancelled the programme. Considerable interest remains, however, and is taken up in numerous journals e.g. the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. Part of the cancelled programme was taken up by the private non-profit S.E.T.I. Institute situated in California, USA. The small band of astronomers, including Dr Frank Drake as their figurehead, used radio telescopes around the world whenever possible to contiue the search, constructed their own telescopes as well, and there is at present an appeal for funds to construct another. A smaller part of the cancelled NASA programme was taken up by the non-profit, grassroots S.E.T.I. League. NASA is still interested in astrobiology and the question of whether or not we are alone has been adopted by the NASA Origins program. A few wealthy private individuals such as Bill Gates of Microsoft Corporation Inc. and the film producer-director Steven Spielberg contribute towards S.E.T.I. research.
the search - S.E.T.I. artwork; from my personal collection
These S.E.T.I. astronomers were undeterred by the fact that the chances of success were so small, so small in fact that they kept a bottle of champagne on ice in case they ever got lucky. The reason their task is so difficult is that even the largest radio telescopes available in the 20th century and early 21st century would not be sensitive enough to detect the stray radio leakage of other worlds. Instead, they have to rely on hoping that extra-terrestrial civilisations would be purposefully directing powerful signals toward the Earth trying to attract our attention, i.e. that these extra-terrestrials have their own equivalent of a S.E.T.I. programme.
Pioneer launches. Source: ?NASA
The S.E.T.I. greeting seen in [Future's End] was loosely based on messages that NASA sent into interstellar space aboard its Pioneer and Voyager space probes. Those greetings, in the form of a plaque on Pioneer 10 and 11, and a record on Voyager 1 and 2, were designed by astronomers Carl Sagan, Frank Drake and others. A replica of the Pioneer 10 plaque is among the wall decorations in Rain's laboratory, and it was designed to communicate with intelligent extra-terrestrials should they ever find it. The Pioneer 10 was launched from Earth on 2nd March 1972 by NASA, and studied the planets Jupiter and Saturn. S.E.T.I. astronomers used Pioneer 10's transmission as a locator fix. Pioneer 10 is the first human-made object to leave Earth's solar system. Contact was lost with 10 in January 2003. Pioneer 10 drifted for centuries in the interstellar void until it (and of course the plaque) was destroyed in 2287 in [Star Trek V: The Final Frontier].
Pioneer 10 plaque, a copy of which (without the labels) Rain has on her wall. Source: NASA. The pictures and more text detail in this paragraph also appear on the previous page.
During the 1990s, as depicted in [Future's End], Chronowerx's chief executive Henry Starling funds a S.E.T.I. laboratory based at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, USA. But he has a secret motive. Under the cover of a traditional S.E.T.I. project, Starling employs graduate student Rain Robinson to search for a particular kind of signal, known as a gamma emission. Unknown to her, but known to Starling, this is the signature of a United Federation of Planets starship's warp drive, as Starling wants as much warning as possible since he believes that visitors from the 29th century Federation will travel back to his time to reclaim their timeship, named Aeon, that he salvaged in 1967 and whose technology he has reverse-engineered to produce innovative computer products and make himself rich in the process.
the search - S.E.T.I. artwork, which includes reference to the binary message included in the standard S.E.T.I. greeting; from my personal collection
There were a number of celestial phenomena which continued to puzzle 20th century astronomers. One was the phenomenon of the Gamma Ray burst. Approximately once every day or two, Earth-orbiting satellites would register a powerful burst of gamma rays emanating from somewhere in the universe. The locations of these bursts were always random, and the timing of them unpredictable. One of astronomer Rain Robinson's tasks is to monitor these gamma ray bursts. After railing to explain a burst in any other way, some astronomers theorised that they might have been detecting the warp drives of alien starships, but early in the 21st century, after [Future's End], the gamma ray bursts were shown to be the formation of a previously unidentified class of black hole.
The 20th century's largest radio telescope was built in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. It was 300 metres in diameter and sat in an entire valley.
Early in the 21st century, astronomers began to drift away from radio searches, and they concentrate instead on detecting planets using the infrared region of the spectrum. By doing this, they could look for the molecules in a planet's atmosphere which betray the presence of life, whether or not it is intelligent. [Future's End] is set just after the discovery of water on Mars which has led to intense speculation on whether life once existed on Mars and the nature thereof - that setting of the episode in late 1996 was coincidental (filming took place in August 1996) and deliberate, as there is a news article clipping on Rain Robinson's lab wall about the find.
