A review of the different proposals made to establish contact with hypothetical planetary neighbors is done. For almost 100 years (approximately 1822-1921) the dominant paradigm for signaling extraterrestrial beings, were based in the exchange of light beam signals. After the success of wireless transatlantic communications and the discovery of radio signals from the cosmos, the main scientific proposals to contact extraterrestrials were based on radio signals. Nevertheless, the development of lasers and other nonlinear optical devices, led into a new set of proposals to use them for interplanetary and interstellar communication means. A review of these proposals and the detection of extraterrestrial technological activities in the optical domain is made. A summary of the requirements needed to explore the astrophysics of shortest timescales is described, in order to develop the nano and sub-nanosecond detectors that could be used to detect interstellar pulsed laser signals.

Date Published: 24 June 1996
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 2704, The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in the Optical Spectrum II, (24 June 1996); doi: 10.1117/12.243446

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2704:
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in the Optical Spectrum II
Stuart A. Kingsley; Guillermo A. Lemarchand, Editor(s)