SETI & Technosignatures

The Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations: A Scientific, Technical, Political, Social, and Cultural Adventure

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

astro-ph.IM

February 14, 2023

Filed under astro-ph.IM, SETI

The Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations: A Scientific, Technical, Political, Social, and Cultural Adventure — The famous WOW signal recorded by Jerry Ehman. The x-axis represents a subset of the 50 frequency channels and the y axis and 12 second time samples of the receiver output. Numbers greater than 9 are represented by letters. Taken from Ehman (2007). — astro-ph.IM

I review the scientific and technical history of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), discuss the impact of the political involvement, and speculate on the nature of a successful detection and its potential social and cultural impact.

Emphasis is on the development of SETI in the United States and the complementary progress in the Former Soviet Union.

K. I. Kellermann

Comments: To be published in Essays on Astronomical History and Heritage A Tribute to Wayne Orchiston on his 80th Birthday, ed. Steven Gullberg and Peter Robertson, Springer
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:2302.06446 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2302.06446v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
Submission history
From: Kenneth Kellermann
[v1] Mon, 13 Feb 2023 15:25:03 UTC (593 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.06446
Astrobiology

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

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