Extraterrestrial Intelligence

The Open SETI Initiative
Gerry Zeitlin

The "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" (SETI) continues to adhere to the principles and to implement the methodologies originally suggested by Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi in 1959. SETI largely limits its searches to scanning for distant single-frequency radio beacons operating in the "microwave window" (a part of the spectrum not blocked by Earth's atmosphere) although recently this strict search regime has been relaxed a bit to include the possibility of more complex pulsed and optical signals.

Faced with over forty years of searching without success for signals configured basically as they were imagined to be in 1959, SETI's response is to plan and develop improved signal processing hardware and larger antennas, while showing little interest in reexamining the assumptions and the paradigm upon which its search methods are based. Thus SETI has not only failed to find what it was searching for, it has also failed to learn from this experience and refocus its search in other directions. Yet ironically, when the rigid constraints of the SETI view are set aside, there DO appear to be widespread indications of an ETI presence that has left its traces on our planet and in our cultures.

Gerry Zeitlin created The Open SETI Initiative to address the failure of the SETI program by carefully reexamining its concepts and methodology, and to promote the recognition and study of the broad range of possible ETI presence and contact. Zeitlin is an electrical engineer with an extensive background in electromagnetic fields and wave propagation, electroencephalography, software engineering, and information security. As a staff engineer with the University of California Space Sciences Laboratory, Berkeley, Zeitlin managed an early version of Project SERENDIP, collecting and analyzing SETI data at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory and at Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Deep Space Network. He was awarded a NASA-ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship at the University of Santa Clara, supporting his contribution to the development of advanced methods of high-speed SETI analysis at NASA Ames Research Center.

The Open SETI paradigm differs radically from that of classical SETI. Visit the website to learn more. www.openseti.org