ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS What is Panspermia? Panspermia, pan meaning ‘all’, and sperma, meaning ‘seed’ is the theory that life is present throughout the Universe, distributed by meteoroids, planetoids, asteroids, comets, and also by spacecraft, particularly in the form of microbes. The Panspermia theory proposes that the microbes (microscopic life forms) that can endure the effects of space, like for instance, extremophiles (microbes that can withstand extreme temperatures), get trapped in debris that is expelled into space after collisions between planetoids and small Solar System bodies that shelter life. Some of the organisms may be scattered dormant for some amount of time before randomly colliding with other planets or intermingling with planetary disks. If met with the ideal conditions on a new planet's surface, the organisms become active and the process of evolution begins. Panspermia is not meant to address how life began, just the method that may cause its distribution in the Universe. How civilizations are categorised based on their energy use (Type 1, 2 and 3) The Kardashev scale is used for measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement, based upon the total amount of energy a civilization utilizes. The scale is categorised into three types called Type 1, 2, and 3. A Type 1 civilization utilises every available resource existing on its home planet, Type 2 derives all the energy of its star, and Type 3 harnesses it from huge swathes of its galaxy. The scale is hypothetical, but it appropriately puts energy consumption in a cosmic perspective. It was first postulated in 1964 by the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev (Kardashyov). Type 1 Civilization Methods Application of Fusion Power: Type 1 involves the conversion of approximately 2 kg of matter to energy per second. An equivalent energy release could be achieved by fusing approximately 280 kg of hydrogen into helium per second, which roughly sums up to 8.9×109 kg/year. A cubic km of water is made up of about 1011 kg of hydrogen, and the Earth's oceans contain about 1.3×109 cubic km of water. Antimatter in a huge quantity could generate power on a scale several magnitudes above our current level of technology. In antimatter-matter collisions, the entire rest mass of the particles is converted to kinetic energy. Their energy density (energy released per mass) is about four orders of magnitude greater than that from using nuclear fission, and about two orders of magnitude greater than the best possible yield from fusion. Creation of artificial antimatter – based on the current understanding of the laws of physics - involves first converting energy into mass, so no net gain results. Artificially created antimatter is only used as a medium of energy storage, not as a source of energy. This is possible only if future technological developments easily enable the conversion of ordinary matter into anti- matter. Theoretically, in the future cultivating and harvesting a number of naturally occurring sources of antimatter may be achievable. Renewable energy (Mostly converting sunlight into electricity - either with the help of solar cells and sunlight concentration, or indirectly via wind and hydroelectric power). There is no established method for human civilization to consume the equivalent of the Earth's total absorbed solar energy without coating the surface with artificial structures, which is not feasible with current technology. However, if a civilization constructed enormous space-based solar power satellites, Type1 power levels might become achievable. Type 2 Civilization Methods Type 2 civilizations might use the same techniques employed by a Type 1 civilization, but applied to a large number of planets in a large number of solar systems. A Dyson sphere or Dyson swarm are hypothetical mega structures originally described by Freeman Dyson as a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to enclose a star completely and capture all of its energy output. Perhaps a more exotic means to generate usable energy would be to feed a stellar mass into a black hole, and collect photons emitted by the accretion disc. Less exotic would be simply to capture photons already escaping from the accretion disc, reducing a black hole's angular momentum; known as the Penrose process. “Star lifting” is a process according to which an advanced civilization could take out a portion of a star's matter in a controlled manner for multiple uses. Antimatter might be produced as an industrial by-product of a number of mega-scale engineering processes and therefore could be recycled. In multiple-star systems containing a large number of stars, absorbing a small but significant fraction of the output of individual stars. Type 3 civilisation methods Type 3 civilisations might use the same techniques employed by a Type 2 civilization, but applied to all possible stars of one or more galaxies individually. They may also be able to tap into the energy released from the supermassive black holes which are believed to exist at the centre of most galaxies. “White holes”, if they exist, theoretically could provide large amounts of energy from collecting the matter propelling outwards. Capturing the energy of gamma-ray bursts is another theoretically possible source of energy for a highly advanced civilization. The emissions from quasars can be readily compared to those of small active galaxies and could provide a massive power source if collectable. The search for life so far.. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is the combined name for a number of activities undertaken to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. SETI projects use scientific methods in this search. For instance, electromagnetic radiations are observed for signs of transmissions from other civilizations. Some of the most prominent projects are run by Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley, or the SETI Institute. In 1995, the United States federal government discontinued funding SETI projects, thus forcing them to resort to private funding to go on with the search, though in recent years, government funding of SETI has resumed but not at the same scale. There are many challenges in looking up into the cosmos for evidences of intelligent life, including their identification and interpretation. SETI projects exploit the most advanced scientific knowledge to conduct experiments, which has led to searches for electromagnetic radiation emitted by advanced technologies. Radio telescopes are used to investigate the cosmos using large radio antennas. A 1959 paper explored the idea of examining the microwave spectrum. In 1960, the first modern SETI experiment was conducted using a 26 meter radio telescope. In 1960s, Soviet scientists were intrigued by SETI and performed a number of experiments and searches with omnidirectional antennas. The University of California, Berkeley, embarked a sky survey using the Arecibo radio telescope in March 2014. In 1980s, physicist Paul Horowitz recommended the design of a spectrum analyser to explore SETI transmissions on 131,000 narrow band channels. Later on Project "META" analysed around 8.4 million channels. In 1978, the NASA SETI program received heavy criticism by Senator William Proxmire, and the funding for SETI research was excluded by Congress from the NASA budget in 1981; however, after Carl Sagan’s intervention in 1982 the funding was restored. Founded in 1994, The SETI League, Inc. is supportedby membership and is a non-profit organization. It pioneered the conversion of backyard satellite TV dishes into research-grade radio telescopes of modest sensitivity. SETI@home was visualised by David Gedye and Craig Kasnoff and is a famous volunteer distributed computing project launched by the University of California, Berkeley, in May 1999. The SETI Institute teamed up with the Radio Astronomy Laboratory at UC Berkeley to build a specialised radio telescope array for SETI studies, sort of a mini-cyclops array. SETI has also been the target of criticism by those who suggest that it is hypothetical or a form of pseudoscience. In particular, critics claim that no observed process show the signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. Sentinel, META, and BETA In the latter part of the 1980s, Carl Sagan, Louis Friedman, and Bruce Murray established the U.S. Planetary Society, mainly as a vehicle for SETI studies. Harvard University physicist Paul Horowitz took the next step and proposed the design of a spectrum analyser specifically intended to search for SETI transmissions. Traditional desktop spectrum analysers were of little use for this job, as they sampled frequencies using banks of analogue filters and so were restricted in the number of channels they could scan. However, modern integrated-circuit digital signal processing (DSP) technology could be used to build autocorrelation receivers to check far more channels. This work led in 1981 to a portable spectrum analyser named "Suitcase SETI" that had a capacity of 131,000 narrow band channels. After tests that lasted into 1982, Suitcase SETI was utilised in 1983 with the 26-meter Harvard/Smithsonian radio telescope at Oak Ridge Observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts. The project was named "Sentinel" and continued into 1985. Even 131,000 channels were not enough to search the sky in detail at a fast rate, so Suitcase SETI was followed in 1985 by Project "META", for "Megachannel Extra-Terrestrial Assay". The META spectrum analyser had a capacity of 8.4 million channels and a channel resolution of 0.05 hertz. An important feature of META was its use of frequency doppler shift to differentiate between signals of terrestrial and extraterrestrial origin. The project was led by Horowitz with the aid of the Planetary Society, and partly funded by movie director Steven Spielberg. In 1990, a second such effort, META II, began in Argentina, to search the southern sky. META II still operates today, after an upgrade in 1996. The follow-on to META was named "BETA", for "Billion-channel Extraterrestrial Assay", and it began observation on October 30, 1995.