The Truth is Out There

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The Truth is Out There

• Learning outcomes
• You should be able to
• Describe the Search for Extraterrestrial
  Intelligence
• Recognise that some questions cannot be answered

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Roswell Incident

• 7 July 1947
• US Airforce statement Flying Disc
• Quickly denied Weather balloon
• 1978 interviews and witnesses

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Alien Autopsy

• 1995 film is released
• Autopsy on dead alien recovered from Roswell
• Military personnel and doctors
• Exposed as a hoax
• Reconstruction

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Why here?

• Right distance from sun
• Right temperature
• Solid
• Gravity traps our atmosphere
• Water present as gas, liquid and solid
• 4 5 billion years

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Where is everybody?

• 100 000 000 000 stars in Milky Way
• Other planets conditions?
• Drake Equation
• Where and how do we look?

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Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)

• Umbrella term
• Searching the skies for transmissions
• Our radio signals 100 years
• Our nearest star 4.3 light years away
• Further away may not have received our signals
• May take a long time to reply

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SETI

• Searches for messages within radio signals
• August 1977
• Strong repeating signal received
• No repeatable

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Message in a bottle

• Voyager 1977 40 000 years
• Contains natural sounds
• Hello in 55 languages
• Music
• Radioactive deposit
• Instructions how to play it

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Is it a good idea?

• Are the movies right?
• What would aliens make of us?