SETI Education

The purpose of this page is to provide helpful information to educators, students, and laypeople on the topic of teaching a course entirely devoted to SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) at an advanced undergraduate or graduate level. SETI is usually understood to be the scientific search for signals from an intelligence outside of our solar system.

This document has been prepared by Larry Lesyna of LXL Technology and is written in the first person, because it expresses many of my personal views. I welcome comments; please contact me at seti@lxltech.com

I’ll start with a few FAQs about university SETI courses.

Why should a course entirely devoted to SETI be taught at an advanced level?

National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Decadal Surveys from 1980+ recommended modest funding for SETI as a worthy scientific endeavor. Both public and private funding have enabled SETI since that time.
Although SETI technical readiness was established about 1972, SETI has adapted to take advantage of new astronomical facilities and advances in semiconductor, computer science and related technologies. SETI concepts are used in astronomy, physics and engineering disciplines. These concepts aid students in their studies, dissertation research, or careers.
The discovery of exoplanets in last two decades have raised awareness about the prospects for intelligent life outside our solar system.
SETI is an exciting topic that draws students from other disciplines to learn more about astronomical concepts.

Astrobiology is already being taught with SETI included as a topic. Why isn’t this enough?

Although some topics like exoplanet detection, biological evolution, and planetary habitability are common to both disciplines, topics unique to SETI include:

Communication by electromagnetic waves over interstellar distances
Effects of the interstellar medium and cosmic background radiation on transmitted signals
Properties of radio and optical telescopes, antennas and receivers
Signal processing methods and algorithms
Search strategies
The prospects for interstellar travel, probes and exotic propulsion methods
Related strategies, such as the detection of technosignatures

To fully cover all of these topics takes at least a quarter or semester.

Would adding a SETI course displace an essential course already established in the university curriculum?

Not necessarily. SETI could alternate with a traditional radio astronomy or astrobiology course. SETI also could be offered as an occasional elective course subject to the availability of faculty or visiting scholars. I expect that as more SETI courses are offered, a suite of educational materials will be developed and shared with those who want to offer a SETI course for the first time. This would allow for more efficient use of the instructor’s time for teaching SETI.

Have there ever been advanced SETI courses offered before 2016?

Not to my knowledge, at least not of the type that I am considering here. There have been a few survey courses directed to non-science majors, a pilot course, SETI reading and SETI seminar series. The first full-fledged SETI course was offered at UCLA in Spring 2016, and the details can be found here. This was entirely an effort conceived and led by Jean-Luc Margot of UCLA. It was a privilege for me to be one of two invited guest lecturers to this ground-breaking course. The course was highly rated by its students; 8.7 on a scale of 1 to 9.

The UCLA group and I have prepared a poster which summarizes what is written on this page and we presented it 6 Jan 2017 at the 229th American Astronomical Society Meeting. Here is a copy of the poster.

Educational Materials and Resources for a SETI course

A good place to start is to read what Wikipedia has to say about SETI.

A SETI course should have a syllabus. There are at least two that have already been used. The UCLA SETI course syllabus can be found here. It emphasized signal processing, statistics, and analysis of radio astronomical data for SETI. The PSU SETI course offered an overview of SETI as a subfield of astrobiology, and its syllabus is here.

I produced a draft syllabus for a SETI course in Dec 2014. I wanted it to be as comprehensive as possible and to cover the fundamentals for all topics that a person considering SETI research would need. It was reviewed by many present and former SETI researchers, which resulted in many topics added that I had not originally considered. I am hopeful that the present version of the syllabus does not leave out any essential topics. It is available here.

At present, there is no SETI textbook. However, here are a number of references that collectively cover much of the scope of a textbook:

“The Living Universe: NASA and the development of Astrobiology”, Chapter 6, by Steven J. Dick and James E. Strick. A concise and thorough history of NASA’s SETI program from 1969 - 1994.
“A Brief History of Congressional Actions Regarding the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)”, Oct 1995, an in-house report by Vera Buescher. This document focuses on the effects, both positive and negative, that various members of the US Congress had on the funding of NASA’s SETI program. The congressional records contained within this document record how lawmakers thought and acted when considering public funding for SETI. I would find some of the pseudo-scientific arguments humorous, had they not led in part to SETI’s cancellation in 1994. Ms. Buescher was administrative assistant to both NASA’s SETI program and Project Phoenix. This document also includes a copy of Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison’s seminal Nature journal article “Searching for Interstellar Communications” from 1959. This document is available for download here.
“Project Cyclops: A Design Study of a System for Detecting Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life”. A summer study held at NASA- Ames Research Center in 1971, which concluded that humanity had the technological capability of mounting an effective SETI, even with 1970s technology. About twenty scientists and engineers participated in the study, with Co-Director Bernard M. Oliver writing most of the document. Because of its superior level of rigor and cohesiveness, I regard this work as a technical masterpiece. It is still in print, and available from the SETI League, an organization devoted to organizing amateurs and professionals to do SETI. Project Cyclops errata is also available.
“The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, NASA SP-419” Edited by Philip Morrison, John Billingham and John Wolfe, this 1977 document summarizes the conclusions of a series of workshops devoted to SETI. The document states and justifies that a SETI program should be immediately initiated. Available here. The NAS Decadal review that followed a few years later also recommended moderate funding levels for SETI.
“The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)” by Jill Tarter. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics Vol 39, pp. 511-549 (Sept 2001). An excellent review article that summarizes SETI efforts, and strategies past, present and for the future. As of 2001 “not much searching has yet been done”. We still need to do more searching.
“SETI 2020: A Roadmap for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” Edited by Ron Ekers, Kent Cullers, John Billingham and Louis Scheffer, 2002. A study suggesting how SETI should be conducted until the year 2020.

SETI observational data and other services available to SETI instructors

Both the Breakthrough Listen project and the SETI Institute have pledged to provide unanalyzed radio astronomical data to instructors offering a university SETI course. Students would have the opportunity to gain experience with the analysis of astronomical data, and potentially find evidence supporting a profound scientific discovery. As both Breakthrough Listen and the SETI Institute conduct SETI observations full-time, they are also positioned to offer other educational services, such as guest lecturers, on-site access to radio telescopes, and internships.

Past and Present SETI Courses

UCLA has offered a SETI course annually, beginning in Spring 2016, with emphasis on observing, signal processing methods, and data analysis. The Spring 2019 course is being planned. Students will design an observing sequence for the Green Bank Telescope, observe known planetary systems remotely, write a sophisticated and modular data processing pipeline, analyze the data, and present the results. The students from the 2016 and 2017 SETI courses have published their findings in the Astronomical Journal. Links to preprints of these papers are available here (2016, 2017) Instructor: Jean-Luc Margot

PSU offered in Spring 2018 a regular, permanent numbered graduate SETI course. It was directed to students across astrobiology disciplines, and considers SETI as a subfield of astronomy, not necessarily tied to radio astronomy. Astrobiology program students will take either this SETI course or an exoplanets course. (Course website, Reading list) Instructor: Jason Wright

Supplemental Information:

Does Astrobiology Encompass SETI?

A recent draft document from the National Academy of Sciences casts some doubt. This document recognizes that SETI and searches for technosignatures are a scientific method for searching for life, but does not explicitly recommend that they be undertaken. At least two white papers that advocated for SETI to be included within astrobiology were considered by the committee that wrote this document ( Tarter et al. , Wright ).

NASA and the Search for Technosignatures

On September 26–28, 2018, NASA hosted the Technosignatures Workshop at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, to learn more about the current field and state of the art for technosignatures searches and what role NASA could possibly play in the future in these searches (this sentence is taken directly from the workshop report). I highly recommend this document to those who want to become informed about the most recent scientific methods for discovering extraterrestial intelligence.

Is SETI the same as Searching for Technosignatures?

In my opinion, there is a distinction. If they were exactly the same, then continued use of both terms is redundant and possibly confusing. Historically, SETI meant searches that, if successful, would be expected to contain a message or other information from an intelligence, such as a radio carrier wave. Technosignature searches encompass SETI, but also include searches for artificial constituents of an atmosphere in an exoplanet, or evidence of artificial sources of light, and many others. Many of these technosignature searches would not be expected to contain a message if they were successful.

Therefore, SETI is the subset of technosignature searches that could contain a message. I adopt that definition of SETI on this site.

SETI pioneers and an undergraduate intern, Summer 1976.
Left to Right: Charles Seeger, David Black, Mary Connors, Barney Oliver, Mark Stull, John Wolfe, John Billingham and Larry Lesyna