On the brink of finding ET? Seti reveals new alien hunting methods that will bring us closer than ever to making first contact
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To date, astronomers have made numerous attempts to find life in the universe, but all to no avail.
But scientists at the Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute are hoping that one of the two new methods they've unveiled might help humanity make first contact.
By searching for signs of intelligent life communicating not with only us but with each other, they're hoping to finally make a detection of another intelligent race in the Milky Way galaxy.
Seti astronomers have announced two new methods they will use to hunt for alien life outside the solar system. One of them will involve using various telescopes around the world like the Allen Telescope Array (pictured) to look for signals across a range of frequencies, known as panchromatic Seti
The methods have been devised by the Seti programme at the University of California Berkeley.
One is known as panchromatic Seti, which will involve the study of 30 stars within 16 light-years of Earth for signals.
THE HISTORY OF SETI
In 1959, Cornell physicists Gieuseppi Cocconi and Philip Morrison published an article discussing the potential to use microwave radio to communicate between stars.
A year later in 1960, astronomer Frank Drake conducted the first hunt for alien life with an 85-foot (25 metres) antenna in West Virgina, but after two months conceded defeat.
In the 1960s, the Soviet Union performed extensive searches for ET, but again with no success.
In the 1970s Nasa began to take an interest in Seti, with the chances of success seemingly growing as technology advanced.
In 1988, Nasa began sweeping surveys of the night sky for signals, but Congress terminated funding a few years later.
The independent Seti Institute, established in 1984, took over the job.
In 1992 the first planet outside the solar system was confirmed by two astronomers, an almost certainly uninhabitable world orbiting a pulsar.
In 2009 Nasa's Kepler telescope launched and, over the next few years, found hundreds of planets.
And in April, the first planet of a similar size to Earth and at the correct distance from its parent star to host water, called Kepler 186-f, was found.
It is the most likely place that has been found that could host life as we know it.
The other method will look for signs of an alien race communicating with other worlds in their own planetary systems.
'If we are polluting space, perhaps other extra-terrestrials are leaking signals,' Dan Wethimer of the Berkley Seti Research Center said, reports Space.com.
'Maybe they're sending something our way.'
Of the two methods the most intriguing is the attempt to 'listen in' on communications being made between two alien worlds.
Consider our own solar system; constantly there are signals going from Earth to planets like Mars and back.
This is so agencies like Nasa can stay in contact with, for example, the Curiosity rover on the surface of the red planet.
It's not unfeasible to think that, if an advanced alien race exists in another system, they too will be busy exploring with their own rovers, or perhaps even on 'manned' missions.
So astronomers will be hoping to listen in on these distant communications, but to do so will require rare alignments to take place.
The only way to listen in on planet to planet or planet to moon communications will be for them to line up directly with Earth.
Such alignments are not unprecedented - in fact, 75 of them have been observed in multi-planet systems.
Now astronomers will just need to track communications from a system when an alignment occurs and see if there is anything to hear.
It's unlikely such a message would be decipherable, given our knowledge of our own signals that are sent to autonomous vehicles in the solar system, but its discovery would be monumental.
And it would almost unequivocally prove the existence of alien life.
Perhaps the more intriguing of the two methods Seti has announced is the search for signs of aliens communicating with other worlds in their own planetary system (illustration shown). By observing the chance alignment of exoplanet and exomoons astronomers will hope to 'listen in' on conversations
The other method is called panchromatic Seti and will involve using various telescopes around the world all tuned to different frequencies.
But the astronomers will be focusing not on stars known to have planets, but instead stars within our vicinity.
And the stars are all different, meaning that the astronomers will have a broad range of targets.
Of them 13 are 'single' like our sun, 14 are binary stars and three belong to a triple star system.
None of the stars are confirmed to have any planets in orbit but, given the expected rate at which planets have been found so far, it is likely that some or all of them to have their own worlds.
This will be the first hunt for life on such a group of stars in our vicinity analysing a large range of frequencies.
But even a non-detection would be of use; it will let astronomers know the limits of our technology.
'This is a new search strategy that widens the frequency range we can listen to (in comparison to previous projects), whilst targeting the 30 stars that lie within 16 light-years from the sun, which is effectively our local neighbourhood,' said Leeds professor and Seti PhD graduate Dr Jon Elliott.
'In addition the second project will also attempt to eavesdrop on signals broadcast from one planet to another in multi-planet systems gathered by Nasa 's Kepler mission.
'These two projects are following in the basic rationale Seti have followed from the outset: to listen for technological beacons, which will indicate the existence of an intelligent alien civilisation.
'This is, of course, the first important stage - to identify and locate such existence - and as our technology improves, our capabilities will do also.'
Hundreds of planets have been found in our small area of the Milky Way such as the potentially habitable Keppler-186 f (illustration shown) but, so far, we're yet to find any signs of alien life. Some have postulated that this might mean we're alone in the universe, but others say we're just scratching the surface of Seti
New telescopes in the future should also increase our capabilities to find exoplanets that are worthy of study.
One of the most exciting missions coming up in the next few years is the Nasa's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, due to launch in 2017.
Using the transit method, which is the process of finding planets when they pass in front of their host star, the telescope will predominantly look for small planets around bright stars.
This will include hunting for potentially habitable Earth-like worlds, the most notable of which will be studied further by Nasa's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.
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