In December 2011, astrobiologist Paul Davies and research technician Robert Wagner published a scientific paper calling for the public’s help to search for traces of extraterrestrial life on the moon. Now the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute is calling on the public for help as well.
Dr Jillian Tarter, director of the SETI Institute’s Center for SETI Research and winner of the TED Prize in 2009, explained, “I’m hoping that an army of volunteers can help us deal with these crowded frequency bands that confuse our machines. By doing this in real time, we will have an opportunity to follow up immediately on what our volunteers discover.”
The BBC points out that crowdsourcing data “has proved to be a very useful tool for scientists in a range of disciplines,” so it makes sense to utilize crowdsourcing in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence as well.
If you want to join the search, register at www.setilive.org.