Article Posted on : - Jan 06, 2009

Radio Telescope. Image from museum's official site

SEOUL (BNS): South Korea’s Gwacheon National Science Museum through its brand new 7.2-meter telescope will search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. The telescope, which is currently under a test run and will be formally activated later this month, has detected radio signals which are being analysed by local astronomers.

Lee Kang-hwan, who will head the museum’s Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programme said that the telescope’s targets will include the Milky Way and about 250 planetary systems.

“Our radio telescope is one of the first instruments of its kind specialising in finding indications of alien life,” Lee said.

In a report published in the Korea Times, Lee has been quoted as saying that there’ve been consistent efforts in several countries to search for radio signals produced by extra-terrestrial life, but no substantial results have been reported. “Science needs more research in this area, and we are glad to be part of the process,” he said.

Trying to discover whether aliens exist has been one of the foremost challenges of modern science. Scientists, believing that radios offer the best chance at communication, after some radio telescopes around the world have picked up signals broadcast by other species. The process is a difficult one, as alien signals would likely be weak. If every radio signal detected from space in the span of a year were converted to electricity, the energy generated would only be enough to light a single Christmas tree bulb for a second, the scientists said.

Scientists believe that giant radio telescopes are needed to detect far distant radio waves. The world’s biggest is the 305-meter diameter telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The largest radio telescope currently used in Korea is at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) in Daejeon and measures 14 meters.