Speaker:  Dr. Jill Tarter, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI, Director, Center for SETI Research

Title:   SETI 2020: A Roadmap for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Abstract:   Following NASA’s experience planning for visionary projects, the SETI Institute has constructed a roadmap for the next two decades of SETI research, through a series of workshops on SETI Science and technology. The workshops took a fresh look at the rationale for SETI, the challenges of attempting to detect evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial technological civilizations, the potential opportunities offered by 21st century technologies, and the arguments for an active (transmitting), as opposed to passive (remote sensing), strategy.

Participants in these workshops (astronomers, physicists, engineers and innovative technologists) reaffirmed the feasibility and importance of conducting SETI programs with foreseeable technology, and recommended three specific projects; 1) continue microwave searches with a dedicated SETI array having a collecting area of at least one hectare, 2) begin optical SETI searches for short (micro- to nano-second) broadband pulses, and 3) begin prototyping and omnidirectional microwave array for transient signals that will become economically viable towards the end of two decades as the result of Moore's Law exponential growth in computing capacity. The results of the workshop were published in 2002 as SETI 2020, but long before publication implementation had begun on each of the proposed projects.

This talk is an update on the state of SETI research today, with an emphasis on the Allen Telescope Array being built in northern California, by the SETI Institute and the University of California Berkeley. We argue that it is timely to consider a public-private partnership for this exploratory field of science.

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