One could feel a sense of excitement in the air as a Hopkins physics professor sat down and began to discuss his recent attempts to discover life on other planets.
Collaborating with the Search For Extraterrestrial Life Institute (SETI) and the Henry Foundation, Richard Conn Henry will soon use the Allen Telescope Array at the University of California, Berkeley to scan the skies for civilizations in outer space.
"I've have always been interested in the chance of finding extraterrestrial life," Henry said.
"There are 200 billion stars in the galaxy and in the last 10 to 15 years, we have found over 300 new planets. Chances are that Earth isn't the only planet that can sustain life."
Henry's opportunity to search for extraterrestrial life is soon approaching.
"Our proposal to search for such civilizations by using the Allen Telescope Array was accepted in July 2008," he said. "We have 32 hours of observing time and we expect to begin in a few months."
According to Henry, the crucial place to look for life is in the ecliptic plane, a large area that represents the path that the Earth takes in its revolution around the Sun. Any extraterrestrial civilization residing within the ecliptic plane would be able to detect the Earth in its revolution.
Henry theorizes that these civilizations would send out radio signals to Earth in order to contact us.
"The extraterrestrial civilizations are just as curious as we are about life on other planets, and in the elliptic plane, they would beam information to us with radio waves in order to see if we exist," Henry said.
Henry further detailed his hypothesis in a paper that he co-authored, called "Advancing the Search for Extraterrestial Life." The paper concludes that if extraterrestrial life exists, radio waves would be the primary way for these civilizations to contact Earth, since "first, generating radio signals requires only simple technology, and second, radio signals can cross the Galaxy with very little absorption."
With the use of the Allen Telescope Array, Henry and his colleagues at SETI will be able to detect these radio waves, if they are being transmitted, and potentially confirm the existence of life in outer space.
"If there is any extraterrestrial civilization out there, I will find it," Henry said.
Underlying Henry's goal of finding life is the premise that most extraterrestrial civilizations are more advanced than us.
"The common misconception is that extraterrestrial organisms are like us," Henry explained. "They are not like us."
"We have only developed and industrialized for the last 200 years. If these extraterrestrial civilizations exist, they would have had thousands of years to develop and their technology would be far more advanced than we could imagine," Henry said.
The race to find extraterrestrial life is heating up. NASA has just launched the Kepler Telescope, which can measure the brightness of stars and planets to determine the existence of life in outer space.
A new telescope that can detect the atmospheric composition of planets is also in the works.
"The James Webb telescope which is in development is the next generation Hubbell Telescope," Henry said.
"This new telescope can see if there are the necessary ingredients in a planet's atmosphere to make life."
Henry hopes that ultimately, his efforts to find life in outer space can benefit mankind.
"If we can find these extraterrestrial life forms, we can learn a lot from them," he said. "We can learn about their history and their technology. There is going to be a voluminous amount of information."
Still, as Henry and his colleagues prepare to undertake their research in California, they keep their expectations on a realistic level.
"I am pessimistic about the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations," Henry admitted with a chuckle. "But I am optimistic that we are going to find them."
