SETI in Australia
For links to Australian and New Zealand astrobiologists
see Astrobiology
Australasia and the Australian Centre for
Astrobiology. Quantum
fluctuations and life by Paul Davies from ACA.
The SETI Australia Centre
is at the University of Western Sydney, Campbelltown. They
have an active search program using the Parkes Radio Telescope
and offer academic and public courses related to bioastronomy
and astrophysics. They also have an exciting high school
package that covers physics, chemistry, microbiology, biology,
astronomy and geology (high school teachers take note). UWS is
carrying out pioneering work on Optical SETI (link to
another site doing this work). During 1997 Carol Oliver from
UWS sent us some notes about the
Australian SETI project - please consider joining SETI
Australia or sponsoring this exciting project.
UWS organised the International SETI Conference at its campus
in January 1998. Scientists from 11 countries attended,
including SETI pioneer Frank Drake. No announcements of a
success but the participants took part in a public relations
workshop to help them better deal with the great day - which
might not be far away. One sobering estimate from Ray
Norris (CSIRO) was that the most probable technological
age difference between us and and an ETI is 1.8 billion years!
(this is based simply on the typical age of Sun-like stars and
does not depend on the actual number of ETI "civilisations" -
except that it is a number greater than zero). See the member's comments page for Ray's
ideas about life in space (December 1996).
SETI League has some photos of
the conference
The Conference Proceedings will be published soon.
The Australia Day (Jan 26 1998) issue of The Sydney Morning Herald
had a feature article on the Conference.
The University of NSW has a general education course "Are
we
alone?"
SETI on the Moon
![[TPSAVC Site map]](tps_map.jpg)
"The
lunar telescope is the most probable permanent facility that will
be set up first." 
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