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November 7th, 2022
Credit: SETI Post-detection Hub
A new international research hub is established to coordinate global expertise to prepare humanity for an ET “we’re not alone” scenario and how we should respond.
The new SETI Post-Detection Hub is an initiative of the UK SETI Research Network (UKSRN), and is jointly hosted by the Scotland-based St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science and the Centre for Global Law and Governance.
The new SETI Post-Detection Hub is hosted by the Center for Exoplanet Science and the Centre for Global Law and Governance of the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
SETI is the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, a collective term for scientific searches for intelligent extra-terrestrial life.
Responsible response
The new hub “will act as a coordinating center for an international effort bringing together diverse expertise across both the sciences and the humanities for setting out impact assessments, protocols, procedures, and treaties designed to enable a responsible response,” according to a university statement.
John Elliott, Coordinator of SETI Post-Detection Hub
Credit: SETI Post-detection Hub
“Scanning signals of assumed extra-terrestrial origin for structures of language and attaching meaning is an elaborate and time-consuming process during which our knowledge will be advanced in many steps as we learn ‘Extra-Terrestrial,’” said John Elliott, Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science of the University of St Andrews and coordinator of the Hub
Societal impact
While there are now procedures and entities established with the United Nations for dealing with the threat posed by impacts of asteroids on Earth, the hub notes, there is nothing similar in place for picking up a radio signal from E.T.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
According to the university statement, the SETI Post-Detection Hub, for the first time, provides a permanent ‘home’ for coordinating the development of a fully comprehensive framework, “drawing together interested members of the SETI and wider academic communities as well as policy experts to work on topics ranging from message decipherment and data analytics to the development of regulatory protocols, space law, and societal impact strategies.”
Another source of ideas
“The St Andrews group is essentially a parallel to the International Academy of Astronautics SETI committee. They have one advantage, sharing the same physical location instead of meeting once a year and communicating by email the rest of the time,” said Michael Michaud, author of the influential book: Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears About Encountering Extraterrestrials, New York, Copernicus (Springer), 2007.
“It may be useful to have another source of ideas about post-detection, but we don’t yet know what those ideas will be,” Michaud told Inside Outer Space.
For more information on this initiative, please go to:
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