Hi.\u00a0 My name is Adam, and I’m an astrophysicist living in the desert of New Mexico, just west of Socorro. Well, actually I\u2019m working as a computer jockey for a local tech firm because being an astrophysicist doesn\u2019t pay. I don\u2019t mean it isn\u2019t worthwhile, I just mean there isn\u2019t a lot of money in it. Ok, it does pay, but I’m not willing to live on pasta for the rest of my life, even if my girlfriend and I are both vegetarian.\u00a0 And, this way we can dine out once in a while, and still have room for my expensive hobby.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m 41, and five years ago I built a 15 foot amateur radio telescope in my back yard. I call it God\u2019s Ear. Using low noise amplifier circuitry modifications, I can now pick up radio waves which range from 1 centimeter to 10 meters in length. I\u2019m mostly interested in recording local emissions, like those from Jupiter, but recently I\u2019ve become interested in reaching beyond our solar system \u2013 capturing binary star radio waves. Recently, astronomers have discovered a black hole only 1,600 light years away from earth by watching a radio wave outburst caused by magnetic fields in an accretion disc near a binary system. 1,600 light years sounds far away, but actually it isn\u2019t. This got me thinking, though. What if there is a closer black hole? Our closest star is only 500 light seconds away. Why couldn\u2019t there be a black hole only 1,000 light years away? How about 500 light years?\u00a0 There are a lot of questions that black holes raise.\u00a0 I\u2019d want to see if I can answer at least one of them.\u00a0 If a black hole is that close, my telescope just might be able to investigate the region on a clear night.\u00a0 It’s wishful thinking.\u00a0 I know, but I’ve always been called a dreamer.<\/p>\n
The world is so complex and beautiful.\u00a0 It would be nice to know if we are the only ones observing and aware of nature\u2019s wonders.\u00a0 No one has found proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, but I\u2019m betting this will change in my lifetime.\u00a0 There is life out there.\u00a0 Not just a patch of bacteria on a distance ice filled planet.\u00a0 Real intelligence.\u00a0 An intelligence that easily rivals our own.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure of it.\u00a0 The problem is distance.\u00a0 At this point, given our current understanding and limitations, the existence of life 10,000 light years away does us little good.\u00a0 Our civilizations have only recently been looking towards the skies with eyes that can see in nearly every spectrum.\u00a0 But, for long distances, our conversation with an intelligent life form would end up sounding something like this:<\/p>\n
Earth:\u00a0 Hey, we\u2019re here.\u00a0 Anyone else here too?<\/p>\n
Earth: (after 600 years, several large explosions vaporize the surface)<\/p>\n
Distant planet 10,000 Years later:\u00a0 TODK NE IFPA UKOLEDO?<\/p>\n
Earth: (Silence)<\/p>\n
If the direction we are taking doesn\u2019t change soon, it\u2019s more than likely humans will not inhabit the earth 10,000 years from now.\u00a0 The earth may, indeed, be uninhabitable.\u00a0 We are only a global war away from perishing at our own hands.\u00a0 Hopefully, many of us will have the opportunity of moving on to bigger and better rocks circling other celestial fusion devices.\u00a0 This is exactly why I need to look closer.\u00a0 Closer than 10,000 light years away.\u00a0 Closer than 1,000 light years away.\u00a0 Anything further is revealing, but mostly academic.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m writing this log to capture my thoughts and observations with God\u2019s Ear.\u00a0 Over the few years, I\u2019ll be searching for black holes and other interesting celestial objects within a reasonable radius of our solar system.<\/p>\n
There is a lot of sky out there, and a dizzying array of formats that signals can arrive in Arizona after a long journey through space.\u00a0 Whatever form the signal comes in, we can be sure of one thing.\u00a0 The signal will be weak and arrive at the most inopportune time.\u00a0 A good way to visualize this is to imagine throwing a football which will be caught 100 years later by someone you do not currently know.\u00a0 Further, when you release the ball, the catcher your throwing the ball to does not yet exist, nor do his ancestors have the ability to catch it.\u00a0 Even if you make an intelligent guess, you are likely to be off in time or space.\u00a0 A lot can happen in 100 years.\u00a0 Unless, of course, you send your football faster than the speed of light.\u00a0 But, hey, if you can do that, you might as well hand the ball to the receiver in person.<\/p>\n
Since I\u2019m smart with computers, I decided to write some custom software to scan sections of the night\u2019s sky and look for ETs and stuff. The trick isn\u2019t moving the dish. The dish has a 360 degree azimuth view, and everything 15 degrees above the horizon is fair game. The hard part is deciding which frequencies to scan, and detecting when an extraterrestrial communication is coming over the line. This is where my programming skills come in. I figured astronomers have already tracked most of the visible stars in the sky, but they probably haven\u2019t been as thorough looking elsewhere for \u201cdarker\u201d matter. So, I fired up my compiler and wrote several thousand lines of Z++ (my own extension to C++) to take the dish on a grand tour of the sky’s darker side looking at frequencies between about 1.4 and 1.7 gigahertz. I called the program \u201cLost-and-Found\u201d or LAF (pronounced laugh!) for short. LAF was given a star catalog with places in the skies to avoid.<\/p>\n
If all goes well, LAF will find some sign of intelligence from somewhere beyond our solar system.\u00a0 If not, there may at least be a dissertation in here somewhere!\u00a0 I will be updating this log with my findings in either case.\u00a0 Wish me luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hi.\u00a0 My name is Adam, and I’m an astrophysicist living in the desert of New Mexico, just west of Socorro. Well, actually I\u2019m working as a computer jockey for a local tech firm because being an astrophysicist doesn\u2019t pay. I don\u2019t mean it isn\u2019t worthwhile, I just mean there isn\u2019t a lot of money in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-universe-experiments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Godslog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Godslog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Godslog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Godslog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Godslog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Godslog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Godslog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Godslog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Godslog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyze3d.com\/Godslog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}