Ian Morison works on the SETI (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) project at Jodrell Bank Observatory, part of the University of Manchester. He believes that the Galaxy is teaming with extra-terrestrial intelligence - it's just a question of finding it.

What is SETI?
SETI stands for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. It began way back in 1959 when two Americans realised that with a large telescope it would be possible, given another one somewhere out there in space, to communicate between the stars. They therefore suggested that one should perhaps listen in case another civilisation out there were trying to communicate with us. The first observations were made the following year, in 1960. The programme was at one stage run by NASA, but there were sadly forced to withdraw their funding by the US Congress so it was taken over and is now privately funded by a number of rich Americans.

What are you looking for?
The SETI search we’re involved in is a targeted search, that is, we’re looking at those places where we hope the chance of finding another civilisation is highest. Now, that essentially means we’re looking at stars somewhat similar to our Sun, we call them ‘sun-like stars’. These live a long time, which would allow a civilisation to evolve, and they’re hot enough to give a reasonable chance that a planet similar to our Earth might be at the right sort of distance from that star to have the right sort of temperature. In the first instance, we’re looking for very, very simple signals - perhaps the best example I could give you is Morse Code. We’re not looking for television pictures or even sound initially, but something that would take a long time for a message to come, but could be picked up over great distances. We’re currently here using radio telescopes to look for radio signals, other scientists are using optical telescopes now to look for optical signals, in the hope perhaps that there might be somebody out there sending a signal towards us.

Are you sure there are other intelligent civilisations in the Universe?
I must say yes to that. Firstly, I’m sure that very simple life is going to be incredibly widespread. It seemed to happen here on Earth virtually the instant that conditions were suitable. Now, whether it originally arose on Earth or came from outside is another matter, but I’m quite sure that very simple life is very, very common. On the other hand, I don’t suspect that that simple life will evolve into advanced civilisations like ours very often - you need to have a very stable environment for a very long time. There are a number of factors about the Earth which have helped that to happen – the plate tectonic system recycles the CO2, helps to regulate the temperature, the fact we have a large moon has helped to stabilise the Earth’s rotation axis, so you haven’t got the point where one pole might be pointed at the sun, so one half’s very hot, the other half’s very cold. There are a number of things like that. But that is bound to happen somewhere else.

If you take our galaxy, you have a hundred thousand million stars, I would at least hope it’s happened a few times, and maybe many thousands of times. If you take the Universe as a whole, where even just the part we can see has hundreds of thousands of millions of galaxies it must be true. But sadly, I don’t think there’s any way we could ever come into contact with other civilisations beyond our galaxy very easily, so really we have to look within the galaxy. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed.

How optimistic are you that we might pick up a signal?
Well I have to say I’m a realist, I think the chances at the present time are relatively low. But the technology is improving all the time and at the moment new, bigger telescopes are being designed and actually funded, some of that by Microsoft founder Paul Allen. And that will mean that as time goes by the searches will become more extensive and then the chances will get greater. In fact, a colleague of mine working at the SETI institute predicted that contact might be made around the year 2020 on the basis that if you take Moore’s law, which shows how computer power increases every 18 months or so, that’s more or less been applied to the number of stars we can investigate for intelligent signals. If that continues in the same way, then around the 2020 mark we might be looking at a fair percentage of our whole galaxy.

If you did receive a signal, how would you be able to tell it came from another planet rather than from Earth?
Well, that’s actually part of the system in Project Phoenix that we’re working on – we use two telescopes simultaneously, the telescope at Arecibo in Puerto Rico and the one here at Jodrell Bank. Because they are well separated on the Earth, we will not in fact pick up signals that are generated locally to either telescope, and also because the Earth is rotating we have a very nice technique using the doplar shift of signals to prove that any signal we pick up simultaneously is actually coming from outside our solar system. Secondly, the type of signal would be, we think, very specific and rather unlike most signals that are produced by transmitters on Earth, because it would be specifically designed to be picked up over great distances. We know what we would do if we wanted to communicate with someone 100 or 200 light years away, we assume that if they’re trying to communicate with us they’ll do the same thing.

Is SETI still worthwhile, in spite of the fact that it has so far been unsuccessful?
First of all, although the chance of success is very, very low, if we were successful the results would be so fantastic it would be worth it – a long shot is sometimes worth playing if the benefits of success are very large. So that’s one thing. But also I think it’s a lovely subject and it’s amazing how much the public are interested in it, and it’s a way of conveying to people at large about some of the mysteries of the universe, the things that you need to have for life to exist. So it gives a sort of a forum to discuss life and our existence here on our own planet, which could be of benefit to our own human race in the future. So I certainly believe it’s worth doing.

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