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#37. The Galileo Project
Here are this week's 3 links worth exploring:
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Harvard University's Astronomy Center for Astrophysics has launched the Galileo Project ("Daring to look through new telescopes"), dedicated to the search for possible physical objects created by Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations (ETCs). It seeks to transform a field of interest historically associated with anecdotal, first-person observations into systematic, peer-reviewed scientific research: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo
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One of the Galileo Project's sub-projects is creating a network of rooftop observatories to continuously monitor the sky. Each observatory will monitor weather, magnetic fields, and capture audio, radar signals, visible and infrared and ultraviolet light. A suite of machine learning tools is being created to analyze the data collected and make note of anomalies. While the research will be made public, unfortunately the hardware and software will not be open source. From the FAQ:
"Can I set up a Galileo Project telescope station on my roof? Unfortunately not. Because the Galileo Project relies on sensitive equipment whose placement is decided by our scientific requirements, we must select the site locations. This is how the Galileo Project will be able to deliver reproducible results." https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/FAQ
- I could see where there might be considerable interest in creating rooftop sky-monitoring stations using open source hardware and software. This discussion on Hacker News references a project to build a rooftop, all-sky Raspberry Pi Camera station, with suggestions of alternate configurations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37850485
Quote of the Week: "As already exemplified by the astronauts who over the years have taken up residency on the International Space Station, in the three dimensions of space, common biology binds us more tightly than competing ideologies. It takes little imagination to place yourself in a six-bedroom house (the Space Station has six sleeping quarters, two bathrooms, and a gym) orbiting Earth and grasp that the need for oxygen comes before politics." — Avi Loeb, Interstellar
Onward!
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