Interstellar and Interplanetary Communication by Optical Masers [with Sagan's own copy of The Quest for Life Beyond the Earth)

SCHWARTS, Robert N. & TOWNES, Charles H. [and Carl Sagan]

Verlag: Washington, 1961

Beschreibung

14 pp. Mimeograph, printed rectos only, stapled. Light browning. Very good. PRE-PUBLICATION RARITY. The classic paper published in Nature that started it all (coseti.org), this is the founding work of optical SETI. This pre-publication form is dated more than a month before the article s publication in Nature. For years SETI research focused on radio transmissions, but the development of powerful lasers has made Optical SETI (OSETI) a highly promising area of research. Townes s prescient proposal is even the more remarkable given the very limited power of masers and lasers at the time this paper appeared. Charles Hard Townes, Nobel Prize-winning physicist, is most famous for his work on the theory and application of the maser, on which he received the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics connected with both maser and laser devices. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964 with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle. Provenance: David Katcher, founding editor of Physics Today, with the notation Mr. Katcher at the top of the first page. [with] Sagan s own copy of his early SETI paper SAGAN, CARL. The Quest for Life Beyond the Earth. Reprinted from Harvard Alumni Bulletin. Washington: Smithsonian, 1965. Original wrappers, stapled as issued. pp. 297-306, 4 plates. Minimal fading. Fine. FIRST SEPARATE EDITION, offprint from the Smithsonian Report for 1964. The author s own copy. Sagan was the most important figure in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and the most famous astronomer of the second half of the twentieth century. A leading figure in the American space program from its inception, he made fundamental contributions in astronomy, especially concerning the atmosphere of planet and moons. His book Cosmos was the best-selling science book up to its time. In this essay, published in Harvard Alumni Bulletin and the Smithsonian Report for 1964, Sagan writes, We are not alone in the universe. Among the countless galaxies, each with billions of stars, there must be as many planets on which life is now flourishing. Sagan discusses the chemical bases of life, with special reference to Watson and Crick, and the possibility that the necessary prerequisites exist on Venus and Mars. Sagan, who experimentally demonstrated that amino acids could be produced from chemicals through radiation, was a pioneering figure in the field of astrobiology. Provenance: Carl Sagan, with his bookplate reproducing the famous extraterrestrial instructions for playing the golden record sent on the Voyager spacecraft. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers ABE-1605554894575

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Interstellar and Interplanetary ...

Verlag: Washington

Erscheinungsdatum: 1961

Einband: No Binding

Zustand: Near Fine

Auflage: 1st Edition