The British astronomers from 11 different organizations come together in one network for a unified and organized search for alien life. The network will be called the U.K Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (Seti) Research Network (UKSRN).
The network is hoping to generate funds from different sponsors for them to continue gathering data and listening to radio telescopes. In the U.S, Seti work is funded by private organizations.
Alan Penny, member of the UKSRN, appealed for U.K to support them like how their American counterpart receives support. "If we had one part in 200 - half a percent of the money that goes into astronomy at the moment - we could make an amazing difference. We would become comparable with the American effort,” he told BBC News.
The British astronomers and scientists had special participation in different Seti projects for the past few years. The most remarkable was the Project Phoenix in which the Jodrell Bank Observatory shared its 76-meter Lovell radio telescope for five years between 1998 and 2003. They sought for alien life among a thousand stars and received funding from the Seti Institute of Calif. However, they found no signs of alien life.
The observatory had improved since then and now has a 217 km-long array with six other telescopes across England. This array is called eMerlin designed to scan the skies for alien signals.
Aside from eMerlin, they also participated in the development of Lofar (Low-Frequency Array for radio astronomy) operated by the ASTRON observatory based in the Netherlands. This telescope is the largest built with over 250,000 antenna scattered in 48 stations across the Netherlands, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, and France. It can detect alien signal as far as 50-light years away from Earth.
Jodrell is also overseeing the creation of another radio telescope called Square Kilometre Array based in South Africa and Australia. It is said to be 50 times more sensitive than other radio telescopes and can survey the sky 10,000 times faster.
With all these plans laid out, it is still unsure whether the network can achieve support that the U.S Seti has. Nevertheless, they would like to promote ‘citizen science’ participation by putting up this network.
