To Open The Sky

Here are some links to relevant external sites (updated 5/15/2005).

• A History of Radio Astronomy (NRAO)
• My Brother Karl Jansky and His Discovery of Radio Waves from Beyond the Earth (C. M. Jansky, Jr.)
• Karl Jansky and the Discovery of Cosmic Radio Waves (Alan Hirshfeld, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth)
• Jansky and Reber: Two Remarkable Stories in Early Radio Astronomy (I. T. Sullivan, Univ. of Washington)
• The Memorial to Ohio University's Big Ear
• A Description of the NRAO Very Large Array (Michael Conti)

• SETI Institute Online
• SETI@home Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at home
• Columbus Optical SETI Observatory
• SETI Resources (Sky & Telescope)
• Galactic Colonization and Other Flights of Fancy (Bernard Oliver)
• How old is ET?
  A paper by Ray P. Norris, CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility
• Interstellar Communication
  Links provided by Mike Matessa, PhD, research psychologist at NASA Ames
• SETI Endeavor: A R C H I V E S
  Archives of three SETI League mailing lists
• Why The SETI Project Is Doomed To Fail (added 4/28/2010)
  A personal essay by Scott Bidstrup
• SETI Range Calculator (added 4/28/2010)
  by the Scottish Boinc SETI team

• The Astrobiology Network
• The Worlds of David Darling
  Dr. Darling maintains a site that covers news of astrobiology.
  He also runs Spaceflight Central and is the author of 8 science books.
• Astrobiology Magazine

• Discovery of Extrasolar Planets
• Extrasolar Planet Almanac (California & Carnegie Planet Search)
• The Geneva Extrasolar Planet Search Programmes
  
  Links updated 9 July 2023

Here are some citations for books providing additional information.

There are hundreds of books on the subject of extraterrestrial life. I won't try to list even a representative sample here. But the four books I do list will give anyone unfamiliar with the literature a good start on understanding why the Great Silence is so puzzling. In addition, the first cites lots of good sources for further exploration, while the last two present conflicting and well-constructed arguments on the rarity or abundance of complex life forms.

1. The best single book on the Fermi Paradox is Where is Everybody? by physicist Stephen Webb. Thoroughly researched, it examines fifty of the most plausible reasons why we haven't heard from ET. It provides extensive notes and a 218-entry bibliography.
   

   If the Universe is Teeming with Aliens... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?
   Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life
   Stephen Webb New York: Copernicus Books, 2002
   ISBN 0-387-95501-1	288p.	HC/BWI	$27.50

2. A reference frequently cited by Webb is Extraterrestrials—Where are they? edited by Zuckerman and Hart. Essentially the proceedings of a conference on SETI, it collects a number of viewpoints on the problem, notably discussions of alternate search strategies and radio frequencies to use. (The citation is for the second edition; the first was published by Pergamon Press in 1982.)
   

   EXTRATERRESTRIALS—WHERE ARE THEY? (2nd ed.)
   Ben Zuckerman (ed.) & Michael Hart (ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995
   ISBN 0-521-44335-0	239p.	HC/BWI	$?

3. According to Rare Earth by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, complex life is rare in the universe. The authors are professors of, respectively, geology and astronomy; both are at the University of Washington.
   

   RARE EARTH
   Peter D. Ward & Donald Brownlee New York: Copernicus Books, 2000
   ISBN 0-387-98701-0	333p.	HC/GSI	$27.50

4. Nobel laureate Christian de Duve, on the other hand, argues persuasively in Vital Dust that life is a cosmic imperative; it must develop wherever conditions permit, and will naturally evolve toward complex forms.
   

   VITAL DUST
   Life as a Cosmic Imperative
   Christian de Duve New York: Basic Books, 1995
   ISBN 0-465-09044-3	362p.	HC/GSI	$25.00