Mountain View, CA – Finding evidence of intelligent species
on worlds orbiting distant Suns is a monumental task. For
starters, how do SETI scientists decide what to look for?
Or where to look – or how? Numerous SETI research projects
exist in the United States and abroad. These modern
searches may vary in detail, but the most ambitious of the
modern SETI experiments have been shaped by a landmark SETI
Institute initiative that plans for a highly strategic and
exciting future.

New from SETI Press, SETI 2020: A Roadmap for the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence is the published report from
the seminal effort to chart the course of SETI research for
the next two decades. This report is a detailed plan for
the evolutionary development of SETI science and technology
between now and the year 2020. It includes an analysis of
the past and present status of the discipline, and
recommends significant new approaches to the search.

“The SETI Institute is proud of this volume, which
represents the most far reaching plan ever written for
SETI. A dynamic group of scientists, engineers, and
technologists were convened to examine the question of how
best to conduct the scientific search for evidence of
extraterrestrial intelligent life,” says Thomas Pierson, who
as SETI Institute CEO oversaw coordination of the working
group. “Over two and a half years, a total of twelve days
of meetings were held involving many of the brightest minds
on the planet. The result is a twenty-year roadmap for SETI
research that encompasses three innovative and diverse
strategies.”

“The 1973 Cyclops Report showed the world that SETI was
possible with 20th Century technology,” explains Dr. Jill
Tarter, Director of SETI Research at the Institute. “This
study optimizes current and foreseeable technologies to do
the job.”

Two of the recommended strategies provide the foundation for
SETI projects that are already underway.

The Allen Telescope Array is a direct result of the SETI
2020 study. The working group recommended construction of a
one-hectare (10,000 square meters) array of 350 six-meter
telescopes that will allow for more powerful microwave SETI
searches to be conducted simultaneously along with other
types of radio astronomy. Recognizing a win-win situation,
the SETI Institute and the University of California,
Berkeley Radio Astronomy Lab joined forces to make the array
a reality.

The resulting partnership between the organizations will
permit astronomers from each group to observe continuously
throughout the 1 to 10 gigahertz region of the spectrum.

Technology development for this new telescope is already
well advanced at Berkeley’s Hat Creek Observatory in
Northern California, thanks to funding from the Paul G.
Allen Foundation.

A second recommendation for optical SETI (OSETI) has spawned
an exciting range of ongoing experiments. OSETI seeks to
detect infrared or optical signals of extraterrestrial
intelligent origin using existing telescopes and fast
photon counting detection techniques. Searches now underway
include a project led by SETI Institute Board of Trustee
Chairman, Dr. Frank Drake. Drake, who performed the world’s
first scientific SETI experiment, Project Ozma in 1960,
today oversees a project in California’s Santa Cruz
Mountains involving scientists from the University of
California’s Lick Observatory, the SETI Institute, UC Santa
Cruz, and UC Berkeley.

Targeted OSETI programs operate at UCB Leuschner
Observatory, at Oak Ridge Observatory in Massachusetts, at
Princeton University and at MacArthur University in Western
Sydney, Australia. Next year, the Harvard OSETI group will
launch the first OSETI sky survey.

The third recommendation anticipates future advances in
technology. The Omni-Directional SETI System is being
designed to search continuously for strong low-duty cycle
microwave signals in the 1 to 3 gigahertz region of the
spectrum. Dr. Kent Cullers, Director of SETI Research and
Development leads the effort to develop this project.

This SETI Institute strategic study was carried out from
1997 through 1999 under the Co-Chairmanship of Dr. Ronald
Ekers, Director of the Australia Telescope National
Facility, and currently President-Elect of the International
Astronomical Union, and Dr. Kent Cullers, of the Institute.
The published report documents the far-reaching efforts of
this interdisciplinary group and should engage anyone with
an interest in SETI.

Says SETI Institute Senior Astronomer Seth Shostak, “SETI
2020 is a work that’s interesting for both the layman and
the scientifically sophisticated. It is the definitive
publication in this fascinating field, one that will give
readers both big picture ideas and specific, technical
detail. It’s an indispensable resource for all those
interested in the exciting new efforts to detect other
intelligence in the cosmos.”

The 551-page illustrated book, edited by Ron Ekers, Kent
Cullers, John Billingham, and Louis Scheffer, contains a
foreword by Philip Morrison and is available on-line at the
Gift Shop tab of the Institute’s home page. The SETI
Institute is currently the sole distributor of SETI 2020.

For book purchase information, come to
http://store.yahoo.com/seti-store/set20roadfor.html

For more information about the SETI 2020 working group,
visit www.seti.org/science/stwg.html

For more information about the SETI Institute, visit
www.seti.org

Optical SETI at the Institute can be found at
www.seti.org/science/oseti_2001.html

The SETI Institute is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) institution
dedicated to research and education.

The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand
and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the
universe.