The chief executive officer of the US-based research organization Seti Institute is Mr. Diamond. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is abbreviated as “Seti” in letters.
“Seti, as an endeavour, is looking for science and technology beyond the solar system as evidence of life and intelligence, and that’s by and large a needle in a haystack problem,” according to him.
“We’re looking for something that is likely exceedingly rare, and may be very difficult to find and extract from the background phenomena that you’re observing at the same time.”
But the quest is being aided by new tools. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is changing as a result of artificial intelligence’s (AI) capacity to manage enormous information and identify anomalies.
One such effort is a collaboration between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico, United States, and the Seti Institute. This government laboratory studies astronomical objects like planets, stars, and asteroids using radio waves.
In parallel, Seti is developing an AI-driven software system for the Very Large Array, the observatory’s central facility. Constructed from 1973 to 1981, the VLA consists of 28 massive, 25-meter-diameter dish antennas dispersed around a desert plain. Think of satellite dishes as large as those seen on residential properties.
