SEARCHING FOR EX TRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE
If aliens use lasers, this advanced new tool might be able to catch them in the act
WORDS ANDREW MAY
Most SETI projects use giant radio telescopes, making them much more expensive than Laser SETI
A stronomers have been looking for evidence of alien civilisations for over 60 years now. Known collectively as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), much of the work to date has involved some fairly restrictive assumptions. In particular, it tended to focus on the detection of radio signals, assuming the aliens are blasting these out at high power either as a deliberate attempt to announce their presence, or for other reasons of their own. A second assumption behind traditional SETI is that the alien signals are continuous and longlasting, so that when we come to point our telescope in the right direction, the signal will be right there waiting for us to pick it up. But what if these assumptions aren’t valid? That’s where a new technique called Laser SETI comes in.