- Practical exercise 1 WILL WE EVER MEET ALIEN SENTIENT LIFE AND HOW WILL WE COMMUNICATE WITH THEM?
- Practical exercise 2 LIFE ON ANOTHER PLANET, MOON OR ASTEROID
- Practical exercise 3 LIFE ON ANOTHER PLANET, MOON OR ASTEROID
- Practical exercise 4 HOW TO FIND OUT WHETHER WE ARE ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE OR JUST ONE AMONG MANY?
- Practical exercise 5 HOW THE SCIENTISTS CONDUCT SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ON OTHER PLANETS?
Practical exercise 1: WILL WE EVER MEET ALIEN SENTIENT LIFE AND HOW WILL WE COMMUNICATE WITH THEM?
Aim:
For students to discuss the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life and to propose methods for communication.
Instructions for the teacher:
This exercise can be done either for the whole class together or in separate groups. In the first case all the students participate together in the discussion, and in the second - the questions are discussed first within each group (for, for example 10 - 15 minutes) and then each group presents their thoughts to the rest of the class. If access to internet is available, some information can be researched with its help.
Instructions for the students:
1. Tell the others what you know about alien life based on read books, TV programmes, films, etc. 2. Find out how many of you believe, that the Earth has been visited by aliens in its near or distant past.
3. Taking into account the questions below, suggest a way for the scientists to determine if there is other life in the Universe:
- What the scientists know at the moment about extraterrestrial life. What evidence is available to them.
- How the scientists have reached present knowledge of the topic. What experiments and technologies they have used.
- Things we still do not have information about. What data we are missing?
- What suppositions can we make at the moment? What test can we perform?
- What new questions and experiments (new research and space missions) would help to find the answer?
4. If possible, see what information you can find online about:
- the SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) project;
- other attempts humanity has made to contact aliens (such as the Voyager missions).
Discuss your findings with the rest of the class.
5. Suppose that the radio telescopes of the SETI project have registered signals from the distant cosmos. Their analysis has shown, that this signals are sent from an intelligent alien beings, living around a distant star. And you want to make contact. To that end, you need to come up with an appropriate message in an appropriate form (binary, language, music, other). Discuss what would be best and defend your proposition to the rest of the class.