The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Catalog description

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is the hunt for technosignatures: signs of non-human technology beyond Earth. The search has many forms, with its targets spanning scales from small objects in the Solar System to galaxy-spanning industry, and is conducted in many ways, from the use of radio telescopes searching for communicative signals to infrared space telescopes searching for Dyson spheres. This course will offer a survey of the field as a subfield of astrobiology, and as an interdisciplinary endeavor that includes biology, astrophysics, game theory, anthropology, law, and many other fields. It begins with a history of the field and its jargon, then continues with a study of the theory of the field, including the Drake Equation and Fermi Paradox, and then the practice of the field, including a survey of the kinds of technosignatures we might search for. It concludes with a study of the social and ethical aspects of the field, and special topics that will vary by semester. The course includes a field trip to Green Bank Observatory to conduct real radio SETI observations and learn the history of SETI at NRAO.