SETI Reconceived and Broadened; A Call for Community Proposals

Earlier this summer, Natalie Cabrol, the director of the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute, described a new direction for her organization in Astrobiology Magazine, and I wrote a Many World column about the changes to come.

Cabrol’s Alien Mindscapes – Perspective on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” laid out a plan for the new approach to SETI that would take advantage of the goldmine of new exoplanet discoveries in the past decade, as well as the data from fast-advancing technologies.  These fresh angles and masses of information come, she wrote,  from the worlds of astronomy and astrophysics, as well as astrobiology and the biological, geological, environmental, cognitive, mathematical, social, and computational sciences.

In her article,  Cabrol said that a call would be coming for community input on how to develop of a Virtual Institute for SETI Research. Its primary goal, she said, would be to “understand how intelligent life interacts with its environment and communicates.”

That call for white papers has now gone out in a release from SETI, which laid out the questions the organization is looking to address:

Question 1: How abundant and diverse is intelligent life in the Universe?

The Virtual Institute will use data synergistically from astrobiology, biological sciences, space and planetary exploration, and geosciences to quantitatively characterize the potential abundance and diversity of intelligent life in the Universe. The spatiotemporal distribution of potential intelligent life will be considered using models of the physicochemical evolution of the Universe.

Question 2: How does intelligent life communicate?

By drawing from a combination of cognitive sciences, neuroscience, communication and information theory, mathematical sciences, bio-neural computing, data mining, and machine learning (among others), we will proactively explore and analyze communication in intelligent terrestrial species. Building upon these analyses, we will consider the physiochemical and biochemical models of newly discovered exoplanet environments to generate and map probabilistic neural and homolog systems, and infer the resulting range of viable alien sensing systems.

Question 3: How can we detect intelligent life?

Using the results (data and databases) of research conducted under Questions 1 and 2, we will consider the design and promising exploration strategies, instruments, exploration strategies, instruments, experimental protocols, technologies, and messaging (content and support) that may optimize the probabilities of detecting intelligent life beyond Earth.

And here is what SETI hopes interested scientists will do:

To support the goals and address the questions outlined above, we seek white papers that will serve as a foundation for the intellectual framework of the Virtual Institute’s roadmap – and that specifically describe: (a) scientific rationales (theories, hypotheses) as foundations for investigations; (b) concepts of experimental designs (methods, protocols, and metrics); (c) universal markers, signals, instruments, systems, technologies for communication; (d) target identification; and (e) ground- and space-based instrumentation, observing scenarios, instrument requirements, and exploration strategies.

To better understand the possible existence of intelligence and technology in the universe, and to learn how to detect it, we expect that proposals may draw from diverse scientific fields. These include astrobiology, astronomy/astrophysics, cognitive sciences, epistemology, geo- and environmental sciences, biosciences, mathematical sciences, social sciences, space sciences, communication theory, bioneural computing, machine learning, big data analytics, technology, instrument and software development, and other relevant fields.

White papers should be submitted in electronic form as PDF files to Dr. Nathalie Cabrol at ncabrol@seti.org. They should be no more than three pages in length, with a minimum 10-point font size. A figure can be included if of critical importance. It is anticipated that there will be an opportunity for interested respondents to present their contribution in person during a planned workshop in the summer of 2017.

Notification of opportunities to present will be made after the white paper deadline of February 17, 2017, and those most responsive to this call will be published in the Astrobiology Journal. Questions related to this call should be addressed to SETI Institute President and CEO Bill Diamond at bdiamond@seti.org

Here is the column I wrote when the Astrobiology Magazine paper came out in August:

For decades, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)  and its SETI Institute home base have been synonymous with the search for intelligent, technologically advanced life beyond Earth.  The pathway to some day finding that potentially sophisticated life has been radio astronomy and the parsing of any seemingly unnatural signals arriving from faraway star system — signals that just might be the product of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

It has been a lonely five decade search by now, with some tantalizing anomalies to decipher but no “eurekas.”  After Congress defunded SETI in the early 1990s — a Nevada senator led the charge against spending taxpayer money to look for “little green men” — the program has also been chronically in need of, and looking for, private supporters and benefactors.

But to those who know it better, the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California has long been more than that well-known listening program.  The Institute’s Carl Sagan Center for Research is home to scores of respected space, communication, and astrobiology scientists, and most have little or nothing to do with the specific message-analyzing arm of the organization.

And now, the new head of the Carl Sagan Center has proposed an ambitious effort to further re-define and re-position SETI and the Institute.  In a recent paper in the Astrobiology Journal, Nathalie Cabrol has proposed a much broader approach to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, incorporating disciplines including psychology, social sciences, communication theory and even neuroscience to the traditional astronomical approach.

“To find ET, we must open our minds beyond a deeply-rooted, Earth-centric perspective, expand our research methods and deploy new tools,” she wrote. “Never before has so much data been available in so many scientific disciplines to help us grasp the role of probabilistic events in the development of extraterrestrial intelligence.

“These data tell us that each world is a unique planetary experiment. Advanced intelligent life is likely plentiful in the universe, but may be very different from us, based on what we now know of the coevolution of life and environment.”

She also wants to approach SETI with the highly interdisciplinary manner found in the burgeoning field of astrobiology — the search for signs of any kind of life beyond Earth. And in a nod to NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, which has funded most of her work, Cabrol went on to call for the establishment of a SETI Virtual Institute with participation from the global scientific community.

I had the opportunity recently to speak with Cabrol, who is a French-American astrobiologist with many years of research experience working with the NASA Mars rover program and with extremophile research as a senior SETI scientist.  She sees the SETI search for technologically advanced life as very much connected with the broader goals of the astrobiology field, which are focused generally on signs of potential microbial extraterrestrial life.  Yes, she said, SETI has thus far a distinctive and largely separate role in the overall astrobiology effort, but now she wants that role to be significantly updated and broadened.

“The time is right for a new chapter for us,” she said. “The origins of SETI were visionary — using the hot technology of the day {radio astronomy} to listen for signals.  But we don’t exactly know what to look and listen for.  We don’t know the ways that ET might interact with its own environment, and that’s a drawback when looking for potential communications we might detect.”

Cabrol foresees future SETI Institute research into neural systems and how they interact with the environment (“bioneural computing,”) much more on the theory and mechanisms of communication, as well as on big data analysis and machine learning.  And, of course, into how potential biosignatures might be detected on distant planets.

The ultimate goal, however, remains the same:  detecting intelligent life (if it’s out there.)

But with so much progress in the sciences that could help improve the chances of finding evolved extraterrestrial life, she said, it’s time for SETI to focus on them as a way to expand the SETI vision and its strategies.

“The purpose is to expand the vision and strategies for SETI research and to break through the constraints imposed by imagining ET to be similar to ourselves,” she wrote. The new approach will “probe the alien landscapes and mindscapes, and generally further understanding of life in the universe.”

The Institute will soon put out a call for white papers on how to expand the SETI search beyond radio astronomy, with an emphasis on “life as we don’t know it.”  After getting those white papers — hopefully from scientists ranging from astronomers to evolutionary biologists — the Sagan Center  plans a workshop to create a roadmap.

Cabrol was emphatic in saying that the SETI search is not turning away from the original vision of its founders — especially astrophysicists Frank Drake, Jill Tarter and Carl Sagan — who were looking for a way to quantify the likelihood of intelligent and technologically-proficient life on distant planets.  Rather, it’s an effort to return to and update the initial SETI formulation, especially as expressed in the famed Drake Equation.

“What Frank proposed was actually a roadmap itself,” Cabrol said.  “The equation takes into account how suitable stars are formed, how many planets they might have, how many might be Earth-like planets, and how many are habitable or inhabited.”

Drake’s equation was formulated for the pioneering Green Bank Conference more than 50 years ago, when basically none of the components of his formula had a number or range that could be associated with it.  That has changed for many of those components, but the answer to the original question — Are We Alone? — remains little closer to being answered.

“I’ve talked a great deal with my colleagues about what type of life can be out there,” she said.  “How different from Earth can it be?”

“Now we’re looking for habitable environments with life as we know it. But it’s time to add life as we don”t know it, too.  And that can help augment our targeting, help pinpoint better what we’re looking for.”

“We think one of the key issues is how ET communicates with its environment, and the great advances in neuroscience can help inform what we do.  The same with evolutionary biology.  Given an environment with life, we want to know, what kind of evolution might be anticipated.”

These are, of course, very long-term goals.  No extraterrestrial life has been detected, and researchers are just now beginning to debate and formulate what might constitute a biosignature on a faraway exoplanet or, what has more recently been coined, a “bio-hint.”

In her paper, Cabrol is also frank about the entirely practical, real-world reasons what SETI needs to change.

“Decades of perspective on both astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) show how the former has blossomed into a dynamic and self-regenerating field that continues to create new research areas with time, whereas funding struggles  have left the latter starved of young researchers and in search of both a long-term vision and a development program.

“A more foundational reason may be that, from the outset, SETI is an all-or-nothing venture where finding a signal would be a world-changing discovery, while astrobiology is associated with related fields of inquiry in which incremental progress is always being made.”

Whatever changes arrive at the SETI Institute, it will continue with its trademark efforts — most importantly operating the Allen Telescope Array in Northern California and collaborations with numerous other SETI groups.  The array began its work in 2007 with 42 interconnected small radio telescopes, and  continues its constant search for incoming signals.  The SETI Institute had hoped to build the array up to 350 telescopes, but the funding has not been forthcoming.

Cabrol is clearly a scientific adventurer and risk taker.  During her extremophile research in Chile, she went scuba diving and free diving — that is, diving without scuba equipment — in the Licancabur Lake, some 20,000 feet above sea level.  It is believed to be an unofficial altitude record high-altitude for both kinds of diving.

With this kind of view of life, she is a logical candidate to bring substantial change to SETI.  The new primary questions for SETI and the institute to probe are: How abundant is intelligent life in the universe?  How does it communicate? How can we detect intelligent life?

As she concluded in her Astrobiology Journal article:

‘Ultimately, SETI’s vision should no longer be constrained by whether ET has technology, resembles us, or thinks like us. The approach presented here will make these attributes less relevant, which will vastly expand the potential sampling pool and search methods, ultimately increasing the odds of detection.

“Advanced, intelligent life beyond Earth is most likely plentiful, but we have not yet opened ourselves to the full potential of its diversity.”