Dr. SETI On Tour!
Dr. SETI's ® Sample Lecture Abstracts
(Caution: The full PowerPoint files are huge, and will consume considerable time and bandwidth to transfer. Please download them only if you are planning to make a public SETI presentation. And remember that they are Copyright © The SETI League, Inc., all rights reserved.)
| Designed to educate and entertain non-technical audiences, this one-hour illustrated concert tells the history of radio astronomy and SETI in fifteen of Dr. SETI's most popular filk songs. A hit on college campuses around the world. |  |
Tune In The Universe!
| A promotional-tour lecture to introduce Dr. SETI's book of the same title, Tune In The Universe! is a radio amateur's introduction to the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Complete with eight Dr. SETI songs, this one-hour presentation is much requested for ham club meetings and annual banquets. Dr. Shuch is happy to autograph copies of his book after the presentation. |  |
Searching for Life Among the Stars
| Just fifty years ago, most credible authorities maintained that humankind is alone among the stars, the sole sentient species in the vast cosmos. Today, the overwhelming preponderance of scientific thinking holds that we are not. How quickly we have completed the Copernican revolution! This presentation by Dr. H. Paul Shuch, executive director or the nonprofit, membership-supported SETI League, will explore the pertinent cosmological evidence which leads most knowledgeable scientists to envision a universe teeming with life. Strategies for SETI, the electromagnetic Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, will be discussed. We will introduce Project Argus, a new cooperative effort between several thousand radio amateurs which rivals any Government search ever proposed and denied funding. Finally, we will discuss the hardware and software which would make our own planet visible from across the galaxy, and which is today within our grasp. | 
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Distributed Processing Goes Galactic
| Are we alone, the sole sentient species in the cosmos, or might there be others, among whom we can take our rightful place? If there is indeed an interstellar internet, might we someday log on? And what are the protocols for cosmic communication? For the first time in human history we now have the technology to ask, and perhaps begin to answer, these questions. In this presentation, H. Paul Shuch explores the strengths and weaknesses of SETI@home, the most ambitious distributed computing experiment on this planet. You will learn how thousands of amateur radio telescopes are forming a global net to snare that elusive fish in the cosmic pond, and expore how the lessons learned from the SETI@home experience can be brought to bear on the problem of massive data collection and analysis. Dr. SETI ® believes it is the world's radio amateurs and computer hobbyists who will ultimately bring in signals from the stars. | 
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One Hundred Up, 4900 To Go! A SETI Project Argus Update
| Reviewing the design criteria of the basic Project Argus amateur radio telescope shows that it achieves sensitivity on a par with the very best professional facilities of a quarter century ago. The challenges of SETI verification and global participation are discussed. Several interesting candidate signals are shown (none of which passed our rigorous tests for intelligent extra-terrestrial origin). Extrapolating current Project Argus technology into the next few decades, we begin to contemplate arraying multiple amateur radio telescopes into a coordinated array of planetary proportions. | 
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2001: A Moonbounce Odyssey
| On numerous occasions during the past four decades, several of the world's largest radio telescopes have been used to reflect interesting microwave signals off the Lunar surface, introducing hundreds of the world's amateur radio operators to the exotic world of EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) communications, or moonbounce. In the third month of the 21st Century, radio amateurs at the nonprofit, grassroots SETI League had an opportunity to return the favor, by providing astronomers at the Arecibo Observatory with a highly stable, precisely calibrated moonbounce signal with which to test their equipment. In the design, construction, and operation of their Lunar Reflective Calibration Beacon for Radio Astronomy and SETI, these radio hams have demonstrated that the difference between amateur and professional involves neither scientific rigor nor technological prowess, but rather the size of the paycheck. | 
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Anatomy of a SETI Hoax
| Non-professional involvement in SETI science, which is encouraged by the nonprofit SETI League, Inc., increases the opportunity for the perpetration of hoaxes. The SETI League has already been peripherally involved in three separate false claims of ETI contact. Two were simple cases of mistaken identity, easily rectified. But the third was an elaborate hoax perpetrated by an internet hacker who broke into a closed signal verification email list. Such claims call for a prompt but measured response, so as not to subject the SETI community to charges of complicity in conspiracy or cover-up activities. In this presentation SETI League executive director Dr. H. Paul Shuch explores the dilemma of encouraging grass-roots participation, while avoiding association with fraudulent and pseudo-scientific claims. | 
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Standards of Proof for the Detection of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence
| The privatization of SETI has resulted in global participation in signal detection and analysis activities by a wide range of non-professionals. The SETI community welcomes this grass-roots support, every bit as much as the optical observing community honors the significant scientific contributions of the world's amateur astronomers. However, as SETI observatories spring up on college campuses and in home gardens worldwide, a need emerges for establishing rigorous signal verification protocols and stringent standards of proof. We recognize the possibility that overly rigorous verification standards can result in an unacceptably high incidence of false negatives. This risk must be balanced against the negative impact on SETI activities everywhere, should lax verification procedures result in the reporting of false positives. In this presentation Dr. H. Paul Shuch, executive director or the nonprofit, membership-supported SETI League, proposes verification and reporting protocols that seek a middle ground. | 
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Optical SETI Comes Of Age
| For many years the microwave Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) held the spotlight, while the number of optical SETI observatories on this planet could be counted on the thumbs of one hand. In the five years since the last Optical SETI Conference, that has begun to change, with optical SETI finally emerging into the scientific mainstream. Advancing technology is only partly responsible for OSETI's change of fortune. This author believes that the ultimate acceptance of the optical search strategy can be attributed to the tireless efforts of a single pioneer. Recent pioneering efforts in microwave SETI have met with similar resistance from the established SETI community, reminding one of an adage from the American West: pioneers end up with arrows in their backs. The SETI League's Project Argus sky survey, for example, which seeks to do credible science with modest amateur equipment, designed, built and operated by dedicated non-professionals, continues to draw criticism from the SETI establishment. Many traditional radio astronomers still believe that SETI requires the kinds of facilities which only governments can afford. This paper explores optical SETI's recent move from the sidelines to center stage, in search of lessons which the world's amateur microwave SETIzens can learn from our dedicated optical brethren. | 
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Array2k: Multiple Dishes, Multiple Modes
| For the past two years, the SETI community has marveled at the development of the ambitious Paul Allen Telescope, a mini-Cyclops consisting of up to a thousand phased satellite TV-type dishes. While saluting the efforts of our California colleagues, The SETI League has been hard at work on its own phased array design, more modest in scope but quite as technologically audacious. When completed, Array2k will employ a unique mix of analog and digital techniques to operate in five distinct modes simultaneously. Optimized as a drift-scan sky survey instrument in the proud tradition of Ohio State's Big Ear, it will serve as its own Follow-Up Detection Device, verifying its own findings in real time. | 
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