Active SETI: The Next Step for Humanity

Friday, 13 February 2015: 8:00 AM-9:30 AM
Room 220C (San Jose Convention Center)
Douglas A. Vakoch, SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA
What if everybody is listening and nobody is transmitting? For half a century SETI has been searching for something that we ourselves do not produce: deliberate transmissions towards distant worlds. We hope ETI will take the initiative to make contact, but they may not. If instead humans take on the responsibility of launching an Active SETI program, we would move toward an intergenerational model of science, with a long-term vision for benefiting other civilizations and future humans.