Seti in Venezuela

Here in Venezuela exist many people that carry out SETI activities in an independent way, the most notorious is the project seti@home which for their characteristics of being able to be almost omnipresent in most of personal and managerial computers offers the possibility to support the search of extraterrestrial life, we work in the SetiLeague Team in this project with several computers.

At this moment I be a Regional Coordinator in Venezuela of SETI League reason why I am trying of in fact to help to coordinate this activity in my country.

The SETI program was created toward the year 1960 and guided to the search of emissions of intelligent origin from the space. The philosophy of SETI guides all its effort clearly toward civilizations of technological type that has been able to leave of conscious or unconscious way a visible or electromagnetic rake of its existence in a certain moment.

Generalized the feeling toward the seventies that the program SETI could give positive results to half or far time, shooting the number of projects of listens all over the world of which continue today.

This equation calculates in a theoretical way the possible number of civilizations intelligent in the Milky Way. The Dr. Drake in 1961 portioned of the premise that the alone life is possible in planets of characteristic similar to the Earth.

N=R*. fp. ne. f1. fi. fc. L

N: is the number of civilizations in the Milky Way whose signs can be detected.

R*: the averaged rhythm of stellar formation stops a lifetime of the Galaxy, in units of stars' number per year.

fp: the fraction of stars that have planetary systems.

ne: The average of planets inside these systems that are ecologically appropriate to the life.

f1: The fraction of these in that life really takes place.

fi: The fraction of planets with life whose beings evolve toward some intelligence form.

fc: The fraction of planets whose intelligent beings reach a technological phase able of being detected.

L: The average life of those technical civilizations.

In the event of an electromagnetic sign or message transmitted to our nearer neighbor for example Centaur, like next star, it would take four years in arriving to their destination. Therefore to arrive there with some of our current probes would be little less than eternal, since the electromagnetic waves travel to 300.000 Km/Seg three hundred thousand kilometers per second.

Another factor that blocks in great way the possible interstellar comunicaciones is the noise taken place by the infinite existent sources in the space, the electromagnetic waves present big advantages since in this they are not very influenced by the cosmic noise, contrary to the light or the infrared radiations the radio waves are difficult of absorver for the powder and the interstellar gas since the stars usually have less activity in this area of the spectrum the interference possibility it is also smaller.

Many astronomers believe that the best search area is in the region of the micro-waves between 1 and 10 Ghz, this spectrum of frequency is inside one of the areas of the Universe of lower noise and it is where the terrestrial atmosphere introduces a smaller sign absorption. Many of the investigators framed in the program SETI suggest the necessity to reduce the search spectrum to a region among 1.4 and 1.7 Ghz that consider the most logical area in observation, this region of frequencies this protected of interferences by international treaties and in this understood the mark in frequency corresponding to two fragments of the molecule of water the hydrogen H, and the hidroxid OH, any type of extraterrestrial emission in this band will be concentrated on a very small margin of frequencies if one wants to overcome the level of noise taken place by the Earth without having to use a great quantity of energy therefore in this type of rake it is not convenient to use a receiver of great width able to detect the whole band in a simultaneous way but one of band narrow preferably between 1 and 10 Hz.

Most of observations carried out up to now by the SETI program have been made with parabolic antennas, this type of antennas possesses a very directional characteristic what allows to receive sign of a very certain area rejecting the whole rest, it becomes impossible the detection of transitory signs or of another type when not being able to receive the whole space visible, this types of antennas simultaneously although of very high gain are considered not very effective for these projects.