These are the papers we read and/or discussed in the class. Some are classics and could be considered part of the SETI “canon”, some are latest research that may enter the canon someday, and a few are well known but actually assigned as cautionary tales. Also included are many tangents that follow discussions that came up in class, and were not assigned but are included for additional reading and/or amusement by interested students.
Not all of these papers are publicly available, but most are available through a university library subscription to major journals. Some are hard to find at all, even with a library as extensive as Penn State’s (we found ILIAD very useful for digging up rare titles).
Those that we assigned in class are in bold. Some important papers were added to the list after class ended for completeness.
Beneath the titles are a brief description of why that particular entry is relevant to this course, followed by a public link to the citation. Beneath those are links to select blog entries by the 2018 SETI course students that summarize/describe/critique those papers. (You can read all of the entries here.)
These are not presented in the order we followed in class; they are in a more natural order that was approximated in the 2020 instance of the course.
The instructor thanks Jill Tarter, Shelley Wright, Andrew Howard, Paul Horowitz, Andrew Howard, and the students in the class for helping identify the papers in this list. If you have big papers that are missed, please email your suggestions to us at astrowright@gmail.com and copy Alan Reyes at areyes@psu.edu, who is compiling a comprehensive bibliography of SETI and put much of this page together.
For those of the following articles that have a presence on the NASA ADS, you can find a publicly accessible library put together by Alan Reyes here for ease of viewing and manipulation:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?library&libname=SETI+Canon&libid=593abab028
Origins
Cocconi & Morrison (1959)
– The birth of Radio SETI.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1959Natur.184..844C
Bracewell (1960)
– The birth of Artifact SETI.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1960Natur.186..670B
– Cañas
Drake (1961)
– The first Radio SETI Experiment.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1961PhT….14…40D
– Kanodia
– Sheihk
SETI Pessimism
Hart (1975)
– The first sharpening and an early formal statement of the Fermi paradox.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1975QJRAS..16..128H
– Jiyu
Tipler (1980)
– Arguments against there being ETI. An argument against the plurality of inhabited worlds.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1980QJRAS..21..267T
Brin (1983)
– A trenchant articulation of the Fermi Paradox
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1983QJRAS..24..283B
Ball (1973)
– An early attempt to resolve the Fermi Paradox: The Zoo Hypothesis
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1973Icar…19..347B
Tipler (1981b)
– A brief history of SETI.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1981QJRAS..22..133T
Tipler (1981c)
– Additional remarks on SETI.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1981QJRAS..22..279T
Tipler (1993)
– Is SETI a waste of effort?
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993SPIE.1867…28T
SETI Optimism & politics
Sagan Petition
– A call for an international observational effort to conduct radio SETI experiments.
– http://science.sciencemag.org/content/218/4571/426.2
– Kanodia
Tarter (1985)
– Rebuttal to pessimists, “why radio?”, and the Cosmic Haystack
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1985imhe.book…..F
Ćirković (2018)
– A rebuttal to “intelligence is rare” arguments.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018AsBio..18..491C
Gray (2015)
– The Fermi Paradox is falsely attributed and isn’t really a formal paradox.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AsBio..15..195G
– MacDonald
– Gilbertson
Sagan & Newman (1982)
– A critique of “solipsist” approaches to the ETI question and an analysis of galactic diffusion.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1983QJRAS..24..113S
– Cañas
Garber (1999)
– A historical review of the cancellation of SETI funding by NASA.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1999JBIS…52….3G
– https://history.nasa.gov/garber.pdf
– Kanodia
Wright (2018)
– Argument to the National Academies of Science that SETI is part of Astrobiology and should be funded by NASA
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1801.04868
Radio SETI
Bell and Little Green Men
– The discovery of pulsars (which were originally codenamed Little Green Men based on their regular pulsation and potentially artificial origin). Also, an anecdote on the challenges of being a female scientist in a male-dominated Academia.
– http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/07/jocelyn-bell-burnell-reflects-discovery-pulsars
Oliver (1979)
– The suggestion of a communal “water hole” frequency range that all water-based life would recognize.
–http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1979AcAau…6…71O
– Cañas
Kraus (1979)
– The Wow! Signal.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1979CosSe…1…31K
– Gilbertson
Tarter (2001)
– A review of field of SETI from its context in the astronomical and greater scientific landscape, with a look at what has been accomplished and what still needs to be done in Radio SETI.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001ARA%26A..39..511T
– Sheikh
Purcell (1960)
– A nice summary of the early justification for radio SETI.
– https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015086583039;view=1up;seq=3
Oliver (1974)
– A nice summary of how radio SETI works.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1973Mercu…2…11O
Drake (1965)
– The proper citation to the Drake Equation
– F. Drake, “The Radio Search for Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life.” In Current Aspects of Exobiology, ed. G. Mamikunian and M. H. Briggs, 323-45. Oxford University Press
Sullivan, Brown and Weatherill (1978)
– “Eavesdropping – The radio signature of the earth”
– A discussion on how obvious Earth is in radio and of what we can infer about a planet from an “eavesdropping” detection without any decoding of information content.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978Sci…199..377S
More on Wow!
Gray (1994)
– Searching for the Wow! locale.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1994Icar..112..485G
Gray (2001)
– A later search for Wow! using the VLA.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001ApJ…546.1171G
Gray (2002)
– A search for periodic emissions near the Wow! locale.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002ApJ…578..967G
Gray (2011)
– Supplemental reading for Wow!
– https://www.amazon.com/Elusive-Wow-Searching-Extraterrestrial-Intelligence/dp/0983958440/
Schelling Points and beacons
Dixon (1973)
– “Beacons” and “anti-cryptography” in SETI
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1973Icar…20..187D
In-class activity
– An exercise to get students thinking about Schelling points.
Schelling (1960) The Strategy of Conflict, Chapter 4
– On the theory of cooperation and the the introduction of Schelling points, common places or times of opportunity recognized by both parties in their pursuit of finding one another.
– https://books.google.com/books?id=7RkL4Z8Yg5AC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+strategy+of+conflict+cooperation&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiBhoTmj-HbAhWOpFkKHTRuB3oQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=Cocconi&f=false
Alexander (2012)
– A nice popular description of Schelling points.
– https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yJfBzcDL9fBHJfZ6P/nash-equilibria-and-schelling-points
Dixit (2012)
– The Art of Strategy, Chapter 4: A Beautiful Equilibrium, p. 110: Lost in New York
– https://books.google.com/books?id=KKwBZ0PYPXQC&q=New+York#v=snippet&q=New%20York&f=false
ABC Primetime
– A video of the Schelling Experiment in NYC.
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uESGjRQNEYk
Wright et al. (2016) (section 5)
– Analysis of how to distinguish beacons from other signals in SETI
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016ApJ…816…17W
Wright (2017; Web)
– Popular description of Schelling Points
Wright (2017)
– Schelling points in SETI
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1707.02175
METI
The Arecibo Message
– The first METI message, sent from Arecibo in 1974.
– https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0019103575901165
– Kanodia
METI Letter
– A statement encouraging international discussion on METI.
– https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/meti_statement_0.html
– Gilbertson
Gertz (2016)
– A condemnation of the activity and proponents of METI.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1605.05663
– Reyes
Wright (2017)
– An ethical consideration of METI
– http://rockethics.psu.edu/everyday-ethics/is-it-ethical-to-transmit-powerful-radio-signals-1 -Sheikh
Oman-Reagan
– An anthropologist considers how humanity looks from the outside
– https://www.sapiens.org/column/wanderers/messaging-to-extraterrestrial-intelligence/
Shostak (2015)
– METI is not Dangerous
– https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/28/opinion/sunday/messaging-the-stars.html?_r=0
WETI
– Waiting for Extraterrestrial Intelligence?
– http://weti-institute.org
JBIS Volume 67, especially Shostak pp 41-42
– Shostak responds to Brin and other METI opponents
Denning (2010)
–Unpacking the great transmission debate
NIR SETI
Schwartz & Townes (1961)
– The suggestion that stimulated emission in the optical and NIR may be a viable platform to conduct SETI searches.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1961Natur.190..205S
– Gilbertson
Wright (2014)
– The instrument design and search strategy of SETI search using pulsed laser signals at NIR wavelength
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1407.2617
– Gilbertson
Optical SETI
Howard et al. (2004)
– An optical SETI search done right.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004ApJ…613.1270H
– Reyes
Kipping & Teachey (2016)
– The proposal that ETIs may seek to cloak the presence of their planet’s transit with deliberate laser emission. Perhaps more importantly: a new Schelling point in SETI.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1603.08928
– Cañas
– MacDonald
What frequencies?
Townes (1983)
– A suggestion that searches shouldn’t be limited to radio and microwave and that other wavelength ranges, such as the IR, should be tried.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1983PNAS…80.1147T
– Gilbertson
Hippke & Forgan (2017)
– An analysis of the physical optimum of interstellar communcation.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1711.05761
– Sheikh
Other carriers
Harwit (2003)
– The suggestion that photon orbital angular momentum can be a communication way for SETI.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:astro-ph/0307430
– MacDonald
Hippke (2017) – The consideration of alternative carriers to photons, such as subatomic particles and bosons.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1711.07962
– Sheikh
Benford (2010) – The consideration of a gravitational wave based SETI message.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010Natur.466..406B
– Gilbertson
Dyson (1963) “Gravitational Machines” in Interstellar Communication: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life; A Collection of Reprints and Original Contributions ed. A.G.W. Cameron
– Gravitational wave detectors should look for evidence of ETIs
– https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~barnes/ast242_s14/Dyson_Machines.pdf
Jackson & Benford (2018) — A Gravitational Wave Transmitter
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018arXiv180602334J
SS artifacts
Freitas (1983)
– The case is made for a search program for extratterestrial messenger probes in the vicinity of the Earth-Moon system.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1983Icar…55..337F
– Gilbertson
Carlotto (1988)
– A digital analysis of the “Face” on Mars. A case of SETI done wrong.
– https://www.osapublishing.org/ao/abstract.cfm?uri=ao-27-10-1926
– Kanodia
– MacDonald
Carlotto (1997)
– More face-on-Mars from Carlotto
– https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e726/4ab2cb9284c4e090d0eec5439383bc508d0e.pdf
Freitas (1980)
– A rare search for free-floating Solar System artifacts
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1980Icar…42..442F
Haqq-Misra & Kopparapu (2012)
– An examination of the likelihood of non-terrestrial artifacts in the Solar System.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1111.1212
Davies & Wagner (2013)
– An overview of the strategies used to determine whether the moon had been occupied in the remote past by an ETI.
– https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576511003249
– Cañas
Rein (2018)
– Analysis of the lifetime of an artificial object in the Solar System: a Tesla Roadster
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1802.04718
Kaku (2017)
– Example of radar used to detect (natural) subsurface cavities on other words.
– https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2017GL074998
Carter (2009)
– More examples of radar detection of (natural) subsurface structure
– https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103508003709
Lighting, PITS
Loeb & Turner (2012)
– A search for artificially illuminated solar system objects using LSST.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1110.6181
– Kanodia
Wright (2017)
– An examination of the possibility that the solar system could have been occupied in the remote past by a prior indigenous intelligence.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1704.07263
– Cañas
Atmospheres and Surfaces
Lin (2014)
– On the use of anthropogenic pollution as a novel biosignature for intelligent life in the planetary atmospheres.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014ApJ…792L…7L
– Gilbertson
Lingham & Loeb (2017)
– Artificial reflections from exoplanetary surfaces
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017MNRAS.470L..82L
Waste Heat / Dyson / Kardashev
Dyson (1960)
– The origin of the idea of Dyson Spheres.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1960Sci…131.1667D
Follow up letters to/from Dyson
– Dialogues on the topic of Dyson Spheres.
– https://www.jstor.org/stable/1705166
– MacDonald
Kardashev (1964)
– The original classification of ETI civilizations based on energy consumption into Types I, II, and III.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1964SvA…..8..217K
– Sheikh
The Byrds: CTA-120
– It’s successful METI! Also, SETI in pop culture: the forgotten false positive of CTA-102
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1mXIiM9QjA
Dyson spheres and Megastructures
Wright et al. (2014)
– The first paper in the Ĝ series, which motivated a search for KII and KIII civilizations based on waste heat.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014ApJ…792…26W
– Cañas
Carrigan (2009)
– A search for Dyson spheres using archival IRAS all-sky infrared survey data.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:0811.2376
Annis (1999)
– An assessment of whether observed galaxies exhibit evidence of KIII civilizations based on their properties.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1999JBIS…52…33A
– Cañas
Arnold (2005)
– The presentation of the idea of transiting semaphores, megastructures in orbit whose aspect would be distinguishable by transit photometers.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005ApJ…627..534A
– Cañas
Wright et al. (2016)
– The fourth installment in the Ĝ paper series and first mention of Tabby’s Star in a SETI context.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016ApJ…816…17W
– Sheikh
Badescu (1995)
– Thermodynamics of Dyson Spheres
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1995AcAau..36..135B
Badescu & Cathcart (2000)
– “Stellar Engines”
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000JBIS…53..297B
Badescu & Cathcart (2006a)
– Dyson Spheres as “stellar engines”
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006AcAau..58..119B
Judson (2017)
– Energy trajectories of planetary life
– https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0138
Forgan (2013)
– Dyson spheres detected in transit
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013JBIS…66..144F
Bradbury (2001a)
– Limits of technology
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001SPIE.4273…56B
Bradbury (2001b)
– Dyson sphere discussion
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001SPIE.4273…63B
Jugaku, Noguchi, & Nishimura (1995)
– An early Dyson Sphere search
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1995ASPC…74..381J
Jugaku & Nishimura (2004)
– Results of the early Dyson sphere search
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004IAUS..213..437J
Bursa (2017)
– A possible use for Solar-system scale engineering
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1704.04469
“Nature Plus”
Davies (2010)
– Chapter from “The Eerie Silence”
– The idea is presented that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature, or “Nature Plus.”
– Under construction…
– Cañas
– Reyes
Villarroel et al. (2016)
– A search for disappearing stars.
–http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016AJ….152…76V
– Sheikh
Research Portfolios and “Fringe” Ideas
Loeb (2008)
– Research Portfolios
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1008.1586
Wright (2018)
– Jill Tarter Biography Review
– https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/PT.3.3847
Stevenson (2017)
– On Outré Ideas
– https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.3507
Kuhn & Berdyugina (2015)
– SETI with a colossal telescope
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015IJAsB..14..401K
SETI Synthesis
Bradbury (2011)
– “Dysonian” SETI
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011JBIS…64..156B
– MacDonald
Wright (2018)
– A call on the SETI community to adopt a comprehensive and definitive lexicon for the field.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018arXiv180104868W
– Kanodia
Culture & Anthropology
Oman-Reagan (2017)
– The idea that in a first encounter with ETI, the differences between cultures and biology inhibit success.
– https://www.sapiens.org/column/wanderers/extraterrestrial-hospitality/
– MacDonald
Wright & Oman-Reagan (2017)
– On the public perception of SETI, the “giggle factor,” and the legacy of colonialism.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018IJAsB..17..177W
– Kanodia
Dick (2006)
– Anthropology of SETI
– http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8322.2006.00421.x/abstract
Denning (2013)
– An anthropologist looks at SETI
– http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-35983-5_16
Intelligence
Davies (2010)
– The Eerie Silence, Chapter 4: How Much Intelligence is Out There?
– Under construction…
Amazing Octopus
– An alien intelligence on Earth
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU_2CzHnbdg
Birds Using Fire
– Intelligent non-human use of fire
– https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/wildfires-birds-animals-australia/#close
SETI in the Media
Andersen (2015)
– The first article on Tabby’s Star.
– https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-most-interesting-star-in-our-galaxy/410023/
– Cañas
– Reyes
Late Night with Tyson
– Pop culture reaction to Tabby’s Star mania.
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UDNOOJ3sr0
– Gilbertson
Grush (2015)
– A meta-article on the misrepresentation of scientific ideas in popular science articles.
– https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/16/9553033/kepler-alien-megastructure-dyson-sphere-kic-8462852
Billings (2018)
– A look at the the reasoning behind scientific skepticism, especially when dealing with the ETI question.
– https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-never-aliens-until-it-is/
– Cañas
Forgan (2016)
– A call to establish a post-detection protocol for SETI which reflects the modern pace of communication.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1605.02947
– Sheikh
SETI protocols
IAA (2010)
– A formal document which outlines the protocols of conduct in a positive SETI detection scenario.
– http://avsport.org/IAA/protocols_rev2010.pdf
– Cañas
Gertz (2017)
– A fervent detestation of METI practices and its adherents.
– http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/arXiv:1701.08422
– MacDonald
Forgan (2018)
– A reformulation of the Rio scale.
– Under construction…
– Kanodia