title: Vamana

text: Vishnu responds that His three steps were also for the benefit of Bali, and to the King directly, says, 'O King, till my honorarium is paid, you go and live free from diseases in the subterranean region called Sutala (good-surfaced) which is highly beneficial'. As in the first account, Vishnu also states that improper sacrifices will also benefit Bali while resident in the netherworld, in addition to other sacred rituals such as Dvara-pratipada. Then, 'having restored heaven to Indra, and enabling the devas to enjoy their shares in sacrifices, the omnipotent Lord of the universe disappeared' (65).


title: Vamana

text: In the Varaha Purana, it seems that the legend of Vamana is only briefly mentioned, as quoted above. Other details include:


title: Vamana

text: In the Vayu Purana, the legend of Vamana is briefly recounted in the second part (36.74-85), an excerpt of which is quoted above. A simplified version of the legend (in comparison to many others), after Vamana takes back the three worlds from the Asuras, 'he forced them to retreat to the bottom of the nether-world along with their sons and grandsons. Namuci, Sambara and Prahlada (were among them). The cruel Danavas were killed'. Bali is also stated to have been 'bound with great nooses along with his kinsmen, friends, and followers'.


title: Vamana

text: The previous two incarnations of Vishnu prior to Vamana are stated to be Varaha and Narasimha. Notably, deviating from incarnations typically listed, the fourth listed (occurring in the tenth Treta Yuga) is Dattatreya, the fifth (fifteenth Treta Yuga) is Mandhatr, the sixth (nineteenth Treta Yuga) is Parashurama, and the seventh (twenty-fourth Treta Yuga) is Ram. Other incarnations following Rama have not been listed here. Other details include:


title: Vamana

text: It seems that the legend of Vamana is only briefly mentioned in the Vishnu Purana. According to the notes of the translator, H.H. Wilson, 'Fuller details occur in the Bhagavata Purana, Kurma, Matsya, and Vamana Purana'. However, it is stated in the above quotation that Vamana had a wife called Padma or Kamala, an incarnation of His eternal consort Lakshmi. The only other mention of a wife is made in the Bhagavata Purana, whose name was Kirti (meaning 'Fame', see above).


title: Vamana

text: Balipratipada is an ancient festival observed during the five days of Diwali that amongst other things commemorates the Bali-Vamana legend. The legend signifies devotion, goodwill and generosity.


title: Vamana

text: In one version of the Vamana legend, when Mahabali offered himself for Vishnu's third step, it was an act of Mahabali's devotion. Vishnu granted him a boon. Mahabali chose to revisit earth, once every year, the lands and people he previously ruled. This revisit marks the festival of Onam, as reminder of the virtuous rule and his humility in keeping his promise before Vishnu.


title: Vamana

text: According to Nanditha Krishna, a simpler form of this legend, one without Mahabali, is found in the "Rigveda" and the Vedic text "Shatapatha Brahmana" where a solar deity is described with powers of Vishnu. This story likely grew over time, and is in part allegorical, where "Bali" is a metaphor for thanksgiving offering after a bounty of rice harvest during monsoon, and "Vishnu" is the metaphor of the Kerala Sun and summer that precedes the Onam. According to Roshen Dalal, the story of Mahabali is important to Onam in Kerala, but similar Mahabali legends are significant in the region of Balia in Uttar Pradesh, Bawan also in the same state, Bharuch in Gujarat, and Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra. The story is significant not because Mahabali's rule ended, but it emphasizes the Hindu belief in cyclical nature of events, that no individual, no ruler and nothing lasts forever, except the virtues and self understanding that overcomes all sorrow.


title: Vamana

text: Vamana iconography varies by region. Three icons are common, one shows his left foot raised above his knee, the second shows his foot above his navel, and the third shows it raised above the forehead. These icons respectively symbolize the three worlds – netherworld, earth and heaven – Vamana covered as Trivikrama.


title: Lost City of Z

text: The Lost City of Z is the name given by Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett, a British surveyor, to an indigenous city that he believed had existed in the jungle of the Mato Grosso state of Brazil. Based on early histories of South America and his own explorations of the Amazon River region, Fawcett theorized that a complex civilization once existed there, and that isolated ruins may have survived.


title: Lost City of Z

text: Fawcett found a document known as Manuscript 512, held at the National Library of Brazil, believed to have been written by Portuguese "bandeirante" . According to the document, in 1753, a group of "bandeirantes" discovered the ruins of an ancient city that contained arches, a statue and a temple with hieroglyphs. He described the city ruins in great detail without giving its location.


title: Lost City of Z

text: "Manuscript 512" was written after explorations made in the sertão of the province of Bahia. Fawcett intended to pursue finding this city as a secondary goal after "Z". He was preparing an expedition to find "Z" when World War I broke out and the British government suspended its support. Fawcett returned to Britain and served on the Western Front during the war. In 1920 Fawcett undertook a personal expedition to find the city but withdrew after suffering from fever and having to shoot his pack animal. On a second expedition five years later Fawcett, his son Jack and Jack's friend Raleigh Rimell disappeared in the Mato Grosso jungle.


title: Lost City of Z

text: Researchers believe that Fawcett may have been influenced in his thinking by information obtained from indigenous people about the archaeological site of Kuhikugu, near the headwaters of the Xingu River. After Fawcett's presumed death in the jungle, Kuhikugu was discovered by Westerners in 1925. The site contains the ruins of an estimated twenty towns and villages in which as many as 50,000 people might once have lived. The discovery of other large geometrical earthworks in interfluvial settings of southern Amazonia has since been recognised as supporting Fawcett’s theory.


title: Lost City of Z

text: In 2005, the American journalist David Grann published an article in "The New Yorker" on Fawcett's expeditions and findings, titled "The Lost City of Z". In 2009 he developed it into a book of the same title and, in 2016, it was adapted by writer-director James Gray into a film also of the same name starring Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland and Sienna Miller.


title: Search for extraterrestrial intelligence

text: The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a collective term for scientific searches for intelligent extraterrestrial life, for example, monitoring electromagnetic radiation for signs of transmissions from civilizations on other planets.


text: Scientific investigation began shortly after the advent of radio in the early 1900s, and focused international efforts have been ongoing since the 1980s. In 2015, Stephen Hawking and Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner announced a project called Breakthrough Listen.


text: There have been many earlier searches for extraterrestrial intelligence within the Solar System. In 1896, Nikola Tesla suggested that an extreme version of his wireless electrical transmission system could be used to contact beings on Mars. In 1899, while conducting experiments at his Colorado Springs experimental station, he thought he had detected a signal from Mars since an odd repetitive static signal seemed to cut off when Mars set in the night sky. Analysis of Tesla's research has led to a range of explanations including: Tesla simply misunderstood the new technology he was working with, that he may have been observing signals from Marconi's European radio experiments, and even speculation that he could have picked up naturally occurring radio noise caused by a moon of Jupiter (Io) moving through the magnetosphere of Jupiter. In the early 1900s, Guglielmo Marconi, Lord Kelvin and David Peck Todd also stated their belief that radio could be used to contact Martians, with Marconi stating that his stations had also picked up potential Martian signals.


text: On August 21–23, 1924, Mars entered an opposition closer to Earth than at any time in the century before or the next 80 years. In the United States, a "National Radio Silence Day" was promoted during a 36-hour period from August 21–23, with all radios quiet for five minutes on the hour, every hour. At the United States Naval Observatory, a radio receiver was lifted above the ground in a dirigible tuned to a wavelength between 8 and 9 km, using a "radio-camera" developed by Amherst College and Charles Francis Jenkins. The program was led by David Peck Todd with the military assistance of Admiral Edward W. Eberle (Chief of Naval Operations), with William F. Friedman (chief cryptographer of the United States Army), assigned to translate any potential Martian messages.


text: A 1959 paper by Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi first pointed out the possibility of searching the microwave spectrum. It proposed frequencies and a set of initial targets.


text: In 1960, Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake performed the first modern SETI experiment, named "Project Ozma" after the Queen of Oz in L. Frank Baum's fantasy books. Drake used a radio telescope in diameter at Green Bank, West Virginia, to examine the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani near the 1.420 gigahertz marker frequency, a region of the radio spectrum dubbed the "water hole" due to its proximity to the hydrogen and hydroxyl radical spectral lines. A 400 kilohertz band around the marker frequency was scanned using a single-channel receiver with a bandwidth of 100 hertz. He found nothing of interest.


text: Soviet scientists took a strong interest in SETI during the 1960s and performed a number of searches with omnidirectional antennas in the hope of picking up powerful radio signals. Soviet astronomer Iosif Shklovsky wrote the pioneering book in the field, "Universe, Life, Intelligence" (1962), which was expanded upon by American astronomer Carl Sagan as the best-selling book "Intelligent Life in the Universe" (1966).


text: In the March 1955 issue of "Scientific American", John D. Kraus described an idea to scan the cosmos for natural radio signals using a flat-plane radio telescope equipped with a parabolic reflector. Within two years, his concept was approved for construction by Ohio State University. With a total of US$71,000 ()


text: in grants from the National Science Foundation, construction began on an plot in Delaware, Ohio. This Ohio State University Radio Observatory telescope was called "Big Ear". Later, it began the world's first continuous SETI program, called the Ohio State University SETI program.


text: In 1971, NASA funded a SETI study that involved Drake, Barney Oliver of Hewlett-Packard laboratories, and others. The resulting report proposed the construction of an Earth-based radio telescope array with 1,500 dishes known as "Project Cyclops". The price tag for the Cyclops array was US$10 billion. Cyclops was not built, but the report formed the basis of much SETI work that followed.


text: The Ohio State SETI program gained fame on August 15, 1977, when Jerry Ehman, a project volunteer, witnessed a startlingly strong signal received by the telescope. He quickly circled the indication on a printout and scribbled the exclamation "Wow!" in the margin. Dubbed the "Wow! signal", it is considered by some to be the best candidate for a radio signal from an artificial, extraterrestrial source ever discovered, but it has not been detected again in several additional searches.


text: In 1980, Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman founded the U.S. Planetary Society, partly as a vehicle for SETI studies.


text: In the early 1980s, Harvard University physicist Paul Horowitz took the next step and proposed the design of a spectrum analyzer specifically intended to search for SETI transmissions. Traditional desktop spectrum analyzers were of little use for this job, as they sampled frequencies using banks of analog filters and so were restricted in the number of channels they could acquire. However, modern integrated-circuit digital signal processing (DSP) technology could be used to build autocorrelation receivers to check far more channels. This work led in 1981 to a portable spectrum analyzer named "Suitcase SETI" that had a capacity of 131,000 narrow band channels. After field tests that lasted into 1982, Suitcase SETI was put into use in 1983 with the Harvard/Smithsonian radio telescope at Oak Ridge Observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts. This project was named "Sentinel" and continued into 1985.


text: Even 131,000 channels were not enough to search the sky in detail at a fast rate, so Suitcase SETI was followed in 1985 by Project "META", for "Megachannel Extra-Terrestrial Assay". The META spectrum analyzer had a capacity of 8.4 million channels and a channel resolution of 0.05 hertz. An important feature of META was its use of frequency Doppler shift to distinguish between signals of terrestrial and extraterrestrial origin. The project was led by Horowitz with the help of the Planetary Society, and was partly funded by movie maker Steven Spielberg. A second such effort, META II, was begun in Argentina in 1990, to search the southern sky. META II is still in operation, after an equipment upgrade in 1996.


text: The follow-on to META was named "BETA", for "Billion-channel Extraterrestrial Assay", and it commenced observation on October 30, 1995. The heart of BETA's processing capability consisted of 63 dedicated fast Fourier transform (FFT) engines, each capable of performing a 2-point complex FFTs in two seconds, and 21 general-purpose personal computers equipped with custom digital signal processing boards. This allowed BETA to receive 250 million simultaneous channels with a resolution of 0.5 hertz per channel. It scanned through the microwave spectrum from 1.400 to 1.720 gigahertz in eight hops, with two seconds of observation per hop. An important capability of the BETA search was rapid and automatic re-observation of candidate signals, achieved by observing the sky with two adjacent beams, one slightly to the east and the other slightly to the west. A successful candidate signal would first transit the east beam, and then the west beam and do so with a speed consistent with Earth's sidereal rotation rate. A third receiver observed the horizon to veto signals of obvious terrestrial origin. On March 23, 1999, the 26-meter radio telescope on which Sentinel, META and BETA were based was blown over by strong winds and seriously damaged. This forced the BETA project to cease operation.


text: In 1978, the NASA SETI program had been heavily criticized by Senator William Proxmire, and funding for SETI research was removed from the NASA budget by Congress in 1981; however, funding was restored in 1982, after Carl Sagan talked with Proxmire and convinced him of the program's value. In 1992, the U.S. government funded an operational SETI program, in the form of the NASA Microwave Observing Program (MOP). MOP was planned as a long-term effort to conduct a general survey of the sky and also carry out targeted searches of 800 specific nearby stars. MOP was to be performed by radio antennas associated with the NASA Deep Space Network, as well as the radio telescope of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia and the radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The signals were to be analyzed by spectrum analyzers, each with a capacity of 15 million channels. These spectrum analyzers could be grouped together to obtain greater capacity. Those used in the targeted search had a bandwidth of 1 hertz per channel, while those used in the sky survey had a bandwidth of 30 hertz per channel.


text: MOP drew the attention of the United States Congress, where the program was ridiculed and canceled one year after its start. SETI advocates continued without government funding, and in 1995 the nonprofit SETI Institute of Mountain View, California resurrected the MOP program under the name of Project "Phoenix", backed by private sources of funding. Project Phoenix, under the direction of Jill Tarter, is a continuation of the targeted search program from MOP and studies roughly 1,000 nearby Sun-like stars. From 1995 through March 2004, Phoenix conducted observations at the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, the radio telescope of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, and the radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The project observed the equivalent of 800 stars over the available channels in the frequency range from 1200 to 3000 MHz. The search was sensitive enough to pick up transmitters with 1 GW EIRP to a distance of about 200 light-years. According to Prof. Tarter, in 2012 it costs around "$2 million per year to keep SETI research going at the SETI Institute" and approximately 10 times that to support "all kinds of SETI activity around the world".


text: Many radio frequencies penetrate Earth's atmosphere quite well, and this led to radio telescopes that investigate the cosmos using large radio antennas. Furthermore, human endeavors emit considerable electromagnetic radiation as a byproduct of communications such as television and radio. These signals would be easy to recognize as artificial due to their repetitive nature and narrow bandwidths. Earth has been sending radio waves from broadcasts into space for over 100 years. These signals have reached over 1,000 stars. Most Notably: Vega, Aldebaran, Barnard's Star, Sirius, and Proxima Centauri. Which are all in the Local Group of Stars near ours. If Alien Life exists on any orbiting planet of these nearby stars, these signals can be deciphered and heard; Even though some of the signal is garbled by the Earth's Ionosphere. (e.g., a broadcast from 1920 would have reached all of them.)


text: Many international radio telescopes are currently being used for radio SETI searches, including the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) in Europe, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Australia, and the Lovell Telescope in the United Kingdom.


text: The SETI Institute collaborated with the Radio Astronomy Laboratory at the Berkeley SETI Research Center to develop a specialized radio telescope array for SETI studies, something like a mini-cyclops array. Formerly known as the One Hectare Telescope (1HT), the concept was renamed the "Allen Telescope Array" (ATA) after the project's benefactor Paul Allen. Its sensitivity would be equivalent to a single large dish more than 100 meters in diameter if completed. Presently, the array under construction has 42 dishes at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in rural northern California.


text: The full array (ATA-350) is planned to consist of 350 or more offset-Gregorian radio dishes, each in diameter. These dishes are the largest producible with commercially available satellite television dish technology. The ATA was planned for a 2007 completion date, at a cost of US$25 million. The SETI Institute provided money for building the ATA while University of California, Berkeley designed the telescope and provided operational funding. The first portion of the array (ATA-42) became operational in October 2007 with 42 antennas. The DSP system planned for ATA-350 is extremely ambitious. Completion of the full 350 element array will depend on funding and the technical results from ATA-42.


text: ATA-42 (ATA) is designed to allow multiple observers simultaneous access to the interferometer output at the same time. Typically, the ATA snapshot imager (used for astronomical surveys and SETI) is run in parallel with a beamforming system (used primarily for SETI). ATA also supports observations in multiple synthesized pencil beams at once, through a technique known as "multibeaming". Multibeaming provides an effective filter for identifying false positives in SETI, since a very distant transmitter must appear at only one point on the sky.


text: SETI Institute's Center for SETI Research (CSR) uses ATA in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, observing 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. From 2007 to 2015, ATA has identified hundreds of millions of technological signals. So far, all these signals have been assigned the status of noise or radio frequency interference because a) they appear to be generated by satellites or Earth-based transmitters, or b) they disappeared before the threshold time limit of ~1 hour. Researchers in CSR are presently working on ways to reduce the threshold time limit, and to expand ATA's capabilities for detection of signals that may have embedded messages.


text: Berkeley astronomers used the ATA to pursue several science topics, some of which might have turned up transient SETI signals, until 2011, when the collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley and the SETI Institute was terminated.


text: In April 2011, the ATA was forced to enter an 8-month "hibernation" due to funding shortfalls. Regular operation of the ATA was resumed on December 5, 2011.


text: In 2012, new life was breathed into the ATA thanks to a $3.6M philanthropic donation by Franklin Antonio, co-founder and Chief Scientist of QUALCOMM Incorporated. This gift supports upgrades of all the receivers on the ATA dishes to have dramatically (2x - 10x from 1–8 GHz) greater sensitivity than before and supporting sensitive observations over a wider frequency range from 1–18 GHz, though initially the radio frequency electronics go to only 12 GHz. As of July, 2013 the first of these receivers was installed and proven. Full installation on all 42 antennas is expected in June, 2014. ATA is especially well suited to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence SETI and to discovery of astronomical radio sources, such as heretofore unexplained non-repeating, possibly extragalactic, pulses known as fast radio bursts or FRBs.


text: SERENDIP (Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations) is a SETI program launched in 1979 by the Berkeley SETI Research Center. SERENDIP takes advantage of ongoing "mainstream" radio telescope observations as a "piggy-back" or "commensal" program, using large radio telescopes including the NRAO 90m telescope at Green Bank and the Arecibo 305m telescope. Rather than having its own observation program, SERENDIP analyzes deep space radio telescope data that it obtains while other astronomers are using the telescopes.


text: The most recently deployed SERENDIP spectrometer, SERENDIP V.v, was installed at the Arecibo Telescope in June 2009. The digital back-end instrument was an FPGA-based 128 million-channel digital spectrometer covering 200 MHz of bandwidth. It took data commensally with the seven-beam Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA). The program found around 400 suspicious signals, but there is not enough data to prove that they belong to extraterrestrial intelligence.


text: "Breakthrough Listen" is a ten-year initiative with $100 million funding begun in July 2015 to actively search for intelligent extraterrestrial communications in the universe, in a substantially expanded way, using resources that had not previously been extensively used for the purpose. It has been described as the most comprehensive search for alien communications to date. The science program for Breakthrough Listen is based at Berkeley SETI Research Center, located in the Astronomy Department at the University of California, Berkeley.


text: Announced in July 2015, the project is observing for thousands of hours every year on two major radio telescopes, the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, and the Parkes Observatory in Australia. Previously, only about 24 to 36 hours of telescope per year were used in the search for alien life. Furthermore, the Automated Planet Finder at Lick Observatory is searching for optical signals coming from laser transmissions. The massive data rates from the radio telescopes (24 GB/s at Green Bank) necessitated the construction of dedicated hardware at the telescopes to perform the bulk of the analysis. Some of the data are also analyzed by volunteers in the SETI@home volunteer computing network. Founder of modern SETI Frank Drake was one of the scientists on the project's advisory committee.


text: In October 2019, Breakthrough Listen started a collaboration with scientists from the TESS team (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) to look for signs of advanced extraterrestrial life. Thousands of new planets found by TESS will be scanned for technosignatures by Breakthrough Listen partner facilities across the globe. Data from TESS monitoring of stars will also be searched for anomalies.


text: China's 500 meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) lists "detecting interstellar communication signals" as part of its science mission. It is funded by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and managed by the National Astronomical observatories (NAOC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). FAST is the first radio observatory built with SETI as a core scientific goal. FAST consists of a fixed diameter spherical dish constructed in a natural depression sinkhole caused by karst processes in the region. It is the world's largest filled-aperture radio telescope.


text: According to its website, FAST could search out to 28 light-years, and would be able to reach 1400 stars. If the transmitter's radiated power is increased to 1000,000 MW, FAST would be able to reach one million stars. This is compared to the Arecibo 305 meter telescope detection distance of 18 light-years.


text: On 14 June 2022, astronomers, working with China's FAST telescope, reported the possibility of having detected artificial (presumably alien) signals, but cautions that further studies are required to determine if some kind of natural radio interference may be the source. More recently, on 18 June 2022, Dan Werthimer, chief scientist for several SETI-related projects, reportedly noted, “These signals are from radio interference; they are due to radio pollution from earthlings, not from E.T.”.


text: Since 2016, UCLA undergraduate and graduate students have been participating in radio searches for technosignatures with the Green Bank Telescope. Targets include the Kepler field, TRAPPIST-1, and solar-type stars. The search is sensitive to Arecibo-class transmitters located within 420 ly of Earth and to transmitters that are 1000 times more powerful than Arecibo located within 13,000 ly of Earth.


text: SETI@home was conceived by David Gedye along with Craig Kasnoff and is a popular volunteer volunteer computing project that was launched by the Berkeley SETI Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, in May 1999. It was originally funded by The Planetary Society and Paramount Pictures, and later by the state of California. The project is run by director David P. Anderson and chief scientist Dan Werthimer. Any individual can become involved with SETI research by downloading the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) software program, attaching to the SETI@home project, and allowing the program to run as a background process that uses idle computer power. The SETI@home program itself runs signal analysis on a "work unit" of data recorded from the central 2.5 MHz wide band of the SERENDIP IV instrument. After computation on the work unit is complete, the results are then automatically reported back to SETI@home servers at University of California, Berkeley. By June 28, 2009, the SETI@home project had over 180,000 active participants volunteering a total of over 290,000 computers. These computers give SETI@home an average computational power of 617 teraFLOPS. In 2004 radio source SHGb02+14a set off speculation in the media that a signal had been detected but researchers noted the frequency drifted rapidly and the detection on three SETI@home computers fell within random chance.


text: As of 2010, after 10 years of data collection, SETI@home has listened to that one frequency at every point of over 67 percent of the sky observable from Arecibo with at least three scans (out of the goal of nine scans), which covers about 20 percent of the full celestial sphere. On March 31, 2020, the project stopped sending out new work to SETI@home users, bringing this particular SETI effort to an indefinite hiatus.


text: The SETI Net station consists of off-the-shelf, consumer-grade electronics to minimize cost and to allow this design to be replicated as simply as possible. It has a 3-meter parabolic antenna that can be directed in azimuth and elevation, an LNA that covers the 1420 MHz spectrum, a receiver to reproduce the wideband audio, and a standard personal computer as the control device and for deploying the detection algorithms.


text: The antenna can be pointed and locked to one sky location, enabling the system to integrate on it for long periods. Currently the Wow! signal area is being monitored when it is above the horizon. All search data are collected and made available on the Internet archive.


text: SETI Net started operation in the early 1980s as a way to learn about the science of the search, and has developed several software packages for the amateur SETI community. It has provided an astronomical clock, a file manager to keep track of SETI data files, a spectrum analyzer optimized for amateur SETI, remote control of the station from the Internet, and other packages.


text: Founded in 1994 in response to the United States Congress cancellation of the NASA SETI program, The SETI League, Inc. is a membership-supported nonprofit organization with 1,500 members in 62 countries. This grass-roots alliance of amateur and professional radio astronomers is headed by executive director emeritus H. Paul Shuch, the engineer credited with developing the world's first commercial home satellite TV receiver. Many SETI League members are licensed radio amateurs and microwave experimenters. Others are digital signal processing experts and computer enthusiasts.


text: The SETI League pioneered the conversion of backyard satellite TV dishes in diameter into research-grade radio telescopes of modest sensitivity. The organization concentrates on coordinating a global network of small, amateur-built radio telescopes under Project Argus, an all-sky survey seeking to achieve real-time coverage of the entire sky. Project Argus was conceived as a continuation of the all-sky survey component of the late NASA SETI program (the targeted search having been continued by the SETI Institute's Project Phoenix). There are currently 143 Project Argus radio telescopes operating in 27 countries. Project Argus instruments typically exhibit sensitivity on the order of 10 Watts/square metre, or roughly equivalent to that achieved by the Ohio State University Big Ear radio telescope in 1977, when it detected the landmark "Wow!" candidate signal.


text: The name "Argus" derives from the mythical Greek guard-beast who had 100 eyes, and could see in all directions at once. In the SETI context, the name has been used for radio telescopes in fiction (Arthur C. Clarke, ""Imperial Earth""; Carl Sagan, ""Contact""), was the name initially used for the NASA study ultimately known as "Cyclops," and is the name given to an omnidirectional radio telescope design being developed at the Ohio State University.


text: While most SETI sky searches have studied the radio spectrum, some SETI researchers have considered the possibility that alien civilizations might be using powerful lasers for interstellar communications at optical wavelengths. The idea was first suggested by R. N. Schwartz and Charles Hard Townes in a 1961 paper published in the journal "Nature" titled "Interstellar and Interplanetary Communication by Optical Masers". However, the 1971 Cyclops study discounted the possibility of optical SETI, reasoning that construction of a laser system that could outshine the bright central star of a remote star system would be too difficult. In 1983, Townes published a detailed study of the idea in the United States journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences", which was met with widespread agreement by the SETI community.


text: There are two problems with optical SETI. The first problem is that lasers are highly "monochromatic", that is, they emit light only on one frequency, making it troublesome to figure out what frequency to look for. However, emitting light in narrow pulses results in a broad spectrum of emission; the spread in frequency becomes higher as the pulse width becomes narrower, making it easier to detect an emission.


text: The other problem is that while radio transmissions can be broadcast in all directions, lasers are highly directional. Interstellar gas and dust is almost transparent to near infrared, so these signals can be seen from greater distances, but the extraterrestrial laser signals would need to be transmitted in the direction of Earth in order to be detected.


text: Optical SETI supporters have conducted paper studies of the effectiveness of using contemporary high-energy lasers and a ten-meter diameter mirror as an interstellar beacon. The analysis shows that an infrared pulse from a laser, focused into a narrow beam by such a mirror, would appear thousands of times brighter than the Sun to a distant civilization in the beam's line of fire. The Cyclops study proved incorrect in suggesting a laser beam would be inherently hard to see.


text: Such a system could be made to automatically steer itself through a target list, sending a pulse to each target at a constant rate. This would allow targeting of all Sun-like stars within a distance of 100 light-years. The studies have also described an automatic laser pulse detector system with a low-cost, two-meter mirror made of carbon composite materials, focusing on an array of light detectors. This automatic detector system could perform sky surveys to detect laser flashes from civilizations attempting contact.


text: Several optical SETI experiments are now in progress. A Harvard-Smithsonian group that includes Paul Horowitz designed a laser detector and mounted it on Harvard's optical telescope. This telescope is currently being used for a more conventional star survey, and the optical SETI survey is "piggybacking" on that effort. Between October 1998 and November 1999, the survey inspected about 2,500 stars. Nothing that resembled an intentional laser signal was detected, but efforts continue. The Harvard-Smithsonian group is now working with Princeton University to mount a similar detector system on Princeton's 91-centimeter (36-inch) telescope. The Harvard and Princeton telescopes will be "ganged" to track the same targets at the same time, with the intent being to detect the same signal in both locations as a means of reducing errors from detector noise.


text: The Harvard-Smithsonian SETI group led by Professor Paul Horowitz built a dedicated all-sky optical survey system along the lines of that described above, featuring a 1.8-meter (72-inch) telescope. The new optical SETI survey telescope is being set up at the Oak Ridge Observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts.


text: The University of California, Berkeley, home of SERENDIP and SETI@home, is also conducting optical SETI searches and collaborates with the NIROSETI program. The optical SETI program at Breakthrough Listen was initially directed by Geoffrey Marcy, an extrasolar planet hunter, and it involves examination of records of spectra taken during extrasolar planet hunts for a continuous, rather than pulsed, laser signal. This survey uses the Automated Planet Finder 2.4-m telescope at the Lick Observatory, situated on the summit of Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose, California. The other Berkeley optical SETI effort is being pursued by the Harvard-Smithsonian group and is being directed by Dan Werthimer of Berkeley, who built the laser detector for the Harvard-Smithsonian group. This survey uses a 76-centimeter (30-inch) automated telescope at Leuschner Observatory and an older laser detector built by Werthimer.


text: In May 2017, astronomers reported studies related to laser light emissions from stars, as a way of detecting technology-related signals from an alien civilization. The reported studies included Tabby's Star (designated KIC 8462852 in the Kepler Input Catalog), an oddly dimming star in which its unusual starlight fluctuations may be the result of interference by an artificial megastructure, such as a Dyson swarm, made by such a civilization. No evidence was found for technology-related signals from KIC 8462852 in the studies.


text: The SETI Institute also runs a program called 'Laser SETI' with an instrument composed of several cameras that continuously survey the entire night sky searching for millisecond singleton laser pulses of extraterrestrial origin.


text: In a 2021 preprint, an astronomer described for the first time how one could search for quantum communication transmissions sent by ETI using existing telescope and receiver technology. He also provides arguments for why future searches of ETI should also target interstellar quantum communication networks.


text: A 2022 paper noted that interstellar quantum communication by other civilizations could be possible and may be advantageous, identifying some potential challenges and factors for detecting technosignatures. They may use, for example, X-ray photons for remotely established quantum communication and quantum teleportation as the communication mode.


text: The possibility of using interstellar messenger probes in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence was first suggested by Ronald N. Bracewell in 1960 (see Bracewell probe), and the technical feasibility of this approach was demonstrated by the British Interplanetary Society's starship study Project Daedalus in 1978. Starting in 1979, Robert Freitas advanced arguments for the proposition that physical space-probes are a superior mode of interstellar communication to radio signals. See Voyager Golden Record.


text: In recognition that any sufficiently advanced interstellar probe in the vicinity of Earth could easily monitor the terrestrial Internet, Invitation to ETI was established by Prof. Allen Tough in 1996, as a Web-based SETI experiment inviting such spacefaring probes to establish contact with humanity. The project's 100 Signatories includes prominent physical, biological, and social scientists, as well as artists, educators, entertainers, philosophers and futurists. Prof. H. Paul Shuch, executive director emeritus of The SETI League, serves as the project's Principal Investigator.


text: Inscribing a message in matter and transporting it to an interstellar destination can be enormously more energy efficient than communication using electromagnetic waves if delays larger than light transit time can be tolerated. That said, for simple messages such as "hello," radio SETI could be far more efficient. If energy requirement is used as a proxy for technical difficulty, then a solarcentric Search for Extraterrestrial Artifacts (SETA) may be a useful supplement to traditional radio or optical searches.


text: Much like the "preferred frequency" concept in SETI radio beacon theory, the Earth-Moon or Sun-Earth libration orbits might therefore constitute the most universally convenient parking places for automated extraterrestrial spacecraft exploring arbitrary stellar systems. A viable long-term SETI program may be founded upon a search for these objects.


text: In 1979, Freitas and Valdes conducted a photographic search of the vicinity of the Earth-Moon triangular libration points and , and of the solar-synchronized positions in the associated halo orbits, seeking possible orbiting extraterrestrial interstellar probes, but found nothing to a detection limit of about 14th magnitude. The authors conducted a second, more comprehensive photographic search for probes in 1982 that examined the five Earth-Moon Lagrangian positions and included the solar-synchronized positions in the stable L4/L5 libration orbits, the potentially stable nonplanar orbits near L1/L2, Earth-Moon , and also in the Sun-Earth system. Again no extraterrestrial probes were found to limiting magnitudes of 17–19th magnitude near L3/L4/L5, 10–18th magnitude for /, and 14–16th magnitude for Sun-Earth .


text: In June 1983, Valdes and Freitas used the 26 m radiotelescope at Hat Creek Radio Observatory to search for the tritium hyperfine line at 1516 MHz from 108 assorted astronomical objects, with emphasis on 53 nearby stars including all visible stars within a 20 light-year radius. The tritium frequency was deemed highly attractive for SETI work because (1) the isotope is cosmically rare, (2) the tritium hyperfine line is centered in the SETI waterhole region of the terrestrial microwave window, and (3) in addition to beacon signals, tritium hyperfine emission may occur as a byproduct of extensive nuclear fusion energy production by extraterrestrial civilizations. The wideband- and narrowband-channel observations achieved sensitivities of 5–14 x 10 W/m/channel and 0.7-2 x 10 W/m/channel, respectively, but no detections were made.


text: Technosignatures, including all signs of technology, are a recent avenue in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Technosignatures may originate from various sources, from megastructures such as Dyson spheres and space mirrors or space shaders to the atmospheric contamination created by an industrial civilization, or city lights on extrasolar planets, and may be detectable in the future with large hypertelescopes.


text: Technosignatures can be divided into three broad categories: astroengineering projects, signals of planetary origin, and spacecraft within and outside the Solar System.


text: An astroengineering installation such as a Dyson sphere, designed to convert all of the incident radiation of its host star into energy, could be detected through the observation of an infrared excess from a solar analog star, or by the star's apparent disappearance in the visible spectrum over several years. After examining some 100,000 nearby large galaxies, a team of researchers has concluded that none of them display any obvious signs of highly advanced technological civilizations.


text: Another hypothetical form of astroengineering, the Shkadov thruster, moves its host star by reflecting some of the star's light back on itself, and would be detected by observing if its transits across the star abruptly end with the thruster in front. Asteroid mining within the Solar System is also a detectable technosignature of the first kind.


text: Individual extrasolar planets can be analyzed for signs of technology. Avi Loeb of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has proposed that persistent light signals on the night side of an exoplanet can be an indication of the presence of cities and an advanced civilization. In addition, the excess infrared radiation and chemicals produced by various industrial processes or terraforming efforts may point to intelligence.


text: Light and heat detected from planets need to be distinguished from natural sources to conclusively prove the existence of civilization on a planet. However, as argued by the Colossus team,


text: a civilization heat signature should be within a "comfortable" temperature range, like terrestrial urban heat islands, i.e. only a few degrees warmer than the planet itself. In contrast, such natural sources as wild fires, volcanoes, etc. are significantly hotter, so they will be well distinguished by their maximum flux at a different wavelength.


text: Other than astroengineering, technosignatures such as artificial satellites around exoplanets, particularly such in geostationary orbit, might be detectable even with today's technology and data, and would allow, similar to fossiles on Earth, to find traces of extrasolar life from long ago.


text: Extraterrestrial craft are another target in the search for technosignatures. Magnetic sail interstellar spacecraft should be detectable over thousands of light-years of distance through the synchrotron radiation they would produce through interaction with the interstellar medium; other interstellar spacecraft designs may be detectable at more modest distances. In addition, robotic probes within the Solar System are also being sought out with optical and radio searches.


text: For a sufficiently advanced civilization, hyper energetic neutrinos from Planck scale accelerators should be detectable at a distance of many Mpc.


text: Italian physicist Enrico Fermi suggested in the 1950s that if technologically advanced civilizations are common in the universe, then they should be detectable in one way or another. (According to those who were there, Fermi either asked "Where are they?" or "Where is everybody?")


text: The Fermi paradox is commonly understood as asking why extraterrestrials have not visited Earth, but the same reasoning applies to the question of why signals from extraterrestrials have not been heard. The SETI version of the question is sometimes referred to as "the Great Silence".


text: There are multiple explanations proposed for the Fermi paradox, ranging from analyses suggesting that intelligent life is rare (the "Rare Earth hypothesis"), to analyses suggesting that although extraterrestrial civilizations may be common, they would not communicate with us, would communicate in a way we have not discovered yet, could not travel across interstellar distances, or destroy themselves before they master the technology of either interstellar travel or communication.


text: The German astrophysicist and radio astronomer Sebastian von Hoerner suggested that the average duration of civilization was 6,500 years. After this time, according to him, it disappears for external reasons (the destruction of life on the planet, the destruction of only rational beings) or internal causes (mental or physical degeneration). According to his calculations, on a habitable planet (one in 3 million stars) there is a sequence of technological species over a time distance of hundreds of millions of years, and each of them "produces" an average of 4 technological species. With these assumptions, the average distance between civilizations in the Milky Way is 1,000 light years.


text: Science writer Timothy Ferris has posited that since galactic societies are most likely only transitory, an obvious solution is an interstellar communications network, or a type of library consisting mostly of automated systems. They would store the cumulative knowledge of vanished civilizations and communicate that knowledge through the galaxy. Ferris calls this the "Interstellar Internet", with the various automated systems acting as network "servers". If such an Interstellar Internet exists, the hypothesis states, communications between servers are mostly through narrow-band, highly directional radio or laser links. Intercepting such signals is, as discussed earlier, very difficult. However, the network could maintain some broadcast nodes in hopes of making contact with new civilizations.


text: Although somewhat dated in terms of "information culture" arguments, not to mention the obvious technological problems of a system that could work effectively for billions of years and requires multiple lifeforms agreeing on certain basics of communications technologies, this hypothesis is actually testable (see below).


text: A significant problem is the vastness of space. Despite piggybacking on the world's most sensitive radio telescope, Charles Stuart Bowyer said, the instrument could not detect random radio noise emanating from a civilization like ours, which has been leaking radio and TV signals for less than 100 years. For SERENDIP and most other SETI projects to detect a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization, the civilization would have to be beaming a powerful signal directly at us. It also means that Earth civilization will only be detectable within a distance of 100 light-years.


text: The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) has a long-standing SETI Permanent Study Group (SPSG, formerly called the IAA SETI Committee), which addresses matters of SETI science, technology, and international policy. The SPSG meets in conjunction with the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) held annually at different locations around the world, and sponsors two SETI Symposia at each IAC. In 2005, the IAA established the SETI: Post-Detection Science and Technology Taskgroup (Chairman, Professor Paul Davies) "to act as a Standing Committee to be available to be called on at any time to advise and consult on questions stemming from the discovery of a putative signal of extraterrestrial intelligent (ETI) origin."


text: However, the protocols mentioned apply only to radio SETI rather than for METI (Active SETI). The intention for METI is covered under the SETI charter "Declaration of Principles Concerning Sending Communications with Extraterrestrial Intelligence".


text: In October 2000 astronomers Iván Almár and Jill Tarter presented a paper to The SETI Permanent Study Group in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil which proposed a scale (modelled after the Torino scale) which is an ordinal scale between zero and ten that quantifies the impact of any public announcement regarding evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence; the Rio scale has since inspired the 2005 San Marino Scale (in regard to the risks of transmissions from Earth) and the 2010 London Scale (in regard to the detection of extraterrestrial life) The Rio scale itself was revised in 2018.


text: The SETI Institute does not officially recognize the Wow! signal as of extraterrestrial origin (as it was unable to be verified), although in a 2020 tweet the organization stated that <nowiki>"an astronomer might have pinpointed the host star"</nowiki>. The SETI Institute has also publicly denied that the candidate signal Radio source SHGb02+14a is of extraterrestrial origin. Although other volunteering projects such as Zooniverse credit users for discoveries, there is currently no crediting or early notification by SETI@Home following the discovery of a signal.


text: Some people, including Steven M. Greer, have expressed cynicism that the general public might not be informed in the event of a genuine discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence due to significant vested interests. Some, such as Bruce Jakosky have also argued that the official disclosure of extraterrestrial life may have far reaching and as yet undetermined implications for society, particularly for the world's religions.


text: Active SETI, also known as messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence (METI), consists of sending signals into space in the hope that they will be picked up by an alien intelligence.


text: In November 1974, a largely symbolic attempt was made at the Arecibo Observatory to send a message to other worlds. Known as the Arecibo Message, it was sent towards the globular cluster M13, which is 25,000 light-years from Earth. Further IRMs Cosmic Call, Teen Age Message, Cosmic Call 2, and A Message From Earth were transmitted in 1999, 2001, 2003 and 2008 from the Evpatoria Planetary Radar.


text: Physicist Stephen Hawking, in his book "A Brief History of Time", suggests that "alerting" extraterrestrial intelligences to our existence is foolhardy, citing humankind's history of treating its own kind harshly in meetings of civilizations with a significant technology gap, e.g., the extermination of Tasmanian aborigines. He suggests, in view of this history, that we "lay low". In one response to Hawking, in September 2016, astronomer Seth Shostak allays such concerns. Astronomer Jill Tarter also disagrees with Hawking, arguing that aliens developed and long-lived enough to communicate and travel across interstellar distances would have evolved a cooperative and less violent intelligence. She does think it is too soon for humans to attempt active SETI and that humans should be more advanced technologically first but keep listening in the meantime.


text: The concern over METI was raised by the science journal "Nature" in an editorial in October 2006, which commented on a recent meeting of the International Academy of Astronautics SETI study group. The editor said, "It is not obvious that all extraterrestrial civilizations will be benign, or that contact with even a benign one would not have serious repercussions" (Nature Vol 443 12 October 06 p 606). Astronomer and science fiction author David Brin has expressed similar concerns.


text: Richard Carrigan, a particle physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois, suggested that passive SETI could also be dangerous and that a signal released onto the Internet could act as a computer virus. Computer security expert Bruce Schneier dismissed this possibility as a "bizarre movie-plot threat".


text: To lend a quantitative basis to discussions of the risks of transmitting deliberate messages from Earth, the SETI Permanent Study Group of the International Academy of Astronautics adopted in 2007 a new analytical tool, the San Marino Scale. Developed by Prof. Ivan Almar and Prof. H. Paul Shuch, the scale evaluates the significance of transmissions from Earth as a function of signal intensity and information content. Its adoption suggests that not all such transmissions are equal, and each must be evaluated separately before establishing blanket international policy regarding active SETI.


text: However, some scientists consider these fears about the dangers of METI as panic and irrational superstition; see, for example, Alexander L. Zaitsev's papers. Biologist João Pedro de Magalhães also proposed in 2015 transmitting an invitation message to any extraterrestrial intelligences watching us already in the context of the Zoo Hypothesis and inviting them to respond, arguing this would not put us in any more danger than we are already if the Zoo Hypothesis is correct.


text: On 13 February 2015, scientists (including Geoffrey Marcy, Seth Shostak, Frank Drake and David Brin) at a convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, discussed Active SETI and whether transmitting a message to possible intelligent extraterrestrials in the Cosmos was a good idea; one result was a statement, signed by many, that a "worldwide scientific, political and humanitarian discussion must occur before any message is sent". On 28 March 2015, a related essay was written by Seth Shostak and published in "The New York Times". Mark Buchanan argued – in the context of potentially detected extraterrestrial activity on Earth – that humanity needs to figure out whether it would be safe or wise to attempt to communicate with extraterrestrials and work on ways to handle such attempts in an organized manner.


text: The Breakthrough Message program is an open competition announced in July 2015 to design a digital message that could be transmitted from Earth to an extraterrestrial civilization, with a US$1,000,000 prize pool. The message should be "representative of humanity and planet Earth". The program pledges "not to transmit any message until there has been a wide-ranging debate at high levels of science and politics on the risks and rewards of contacting advanced civilizations".


text: As various SETI projects have progressed, some have criticized early claims by researchers as being too "euphoric". For example, Peter Schenkel, while remaining a supporter of SETI projects, wrote in 2006 that


text: Critics claim that the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence has no good Popperian criteria for falsifiability, as explained in a 2009 editorial in "Nature", which said:


text: "Nature" added that SETI was "marked by a hope, bordering on faith" that aliens were aiming signals at us, that a hypothetical alien SETI project looking at Earth with "similar faith" would be "sorely disappointed" (despite our many untargeted radar and TV signals, and our few targeted Active SETI radio signals denounced by those fearing aliens), and that it had difficulties attracting even sympathetic working scientists and Government funding because it was "an effort so likely to turn up nothing".


text: However, "Nature" also added, "Nonetheless, a small SETI effort is well worth supporting, especially given the enormous implications if it did succeed" and that "happily, a handful of wealthy technologists and other private donors have proved willing to provide that support".


text: Supporters of the Rare Earth Hypothesis argue that advanced lifeforms are likely to be very rare, and that, if that is so, then SETI efforts will be futile. However, the Rare Earth Hypothesis itself faces many criticisms.


text: In 1993, Roy Mash stated that "Arguments favoring the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence nearly always contain an overt appeal to big numbers, often combined with a covert reliance on generalization from a single instance" and concluded that "the dispute between believers and skeptics is seen to boil down to a conflict of intuitions which can barely be engaged, let alone resolved, given our present state of knowledge". In 2012, Milan M. Ćirković (who was then research professor at the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade and a research associate of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford) said that Mash was unrealistically over-reliant on excessive abstraction that ignored the empirical information available to modern SETI researchers.


text: George Basalla, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Delaware, is a critic of SETI who argued in 2006 that "extraterrestrials discussed by scientists are as imaginary as the spirits and gods of religion or myth", and has in turn been criticized by Milan M. Ćirković for, among other things, being unable to distinguish between "SETI believers" and "scientists engaged in SETI", who are often sceptical (especially about quick detection), such as Freeman Dyson (and, at least in their later years, Iosif Shklovsky and Sebastian von Hoerner), and for ignoring the difference between the knowledge underlying the arguments of modern scientists and those of ancient Greek thinkers.


text: Massimo Pigliucci, Professor of Philosophy at CUNY-City College, asked in 2010 whether SETI is "uncomfortably close to the status of pseudoscience" due to the lack of any clear point at which negative results cause the hypothesis of Extraterrestrial Intelligence to be abandoned, before eventually concluding that SETI is "almost-science", which is described by Milan M. Ćirković as Pigliucci putting SETI in "the illustrious company of string theory, interpretations of quantum mechanics, evolutionary psychology and history (of the 'synthetic' kind done recently by Jared Diamond)", while adding that his justification for doing so with SETI "is weak, outdated, and reflecting particular philosophical prejudices similar to the ones described above in Mash and Basalla".


text: Ufologist Stanton Friedman has often criticized SETI researchers for, among other reasons, what he sees as their unscientific criticisms of Ufology, but, unlike SETI, Ufology has generally not been embraced by academia as a scientific field of study, and it is usually characterized as a partial or total pseudoscience. In a 2016 interview, Jill Tarter pointed out that it is still a misconception that SETI and UFOs are related. She says that, "SETI uses the tools of the astronomer to attempt to find evidence of somebody else's technology coming from a great distance. If we ever claim detection of a signal, we will provide evidence and data that can be independently confirmed. UFOs—none of the above." The Galileo Project headed by Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb is one of the few scientific efforts to study UFOs or UAPs. Loeb criticized that the study of UAP is often dismissed and not sufficiently studied by scientists and should shift from "occupying the talking points of national security administrators and politicians" to the realm of science. The Galileo Projects finds that after the publication of the UFO Report by the U.S. Intelligence the scientific community needs to "systematically, scientifically and transparently look for potential evidence of extraterrestrial technological equipment".


title: Private Secretary to the Sovereign

text: The Private Secretary to the Sovereign is the senior operational member of the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom (as distinct from the Great Officers of the Household, whose duties are largely ceremonial). The Private Secretary is the principal channel of communication between the monarch and the governments in most of the Commonwealth realms. They also have responsibility for the official programme and correspondence of the Sovereign. Through these roles the position wields considerable influence.


title: Private Secretary to the Sovereign

text: The office of Private Secretary was first established in 1805. the position has been held exclusively by men. Two women have served as Deputy and Assistant Private Secretary, respectively. The current Private Secretary position is jointly held by Sir Clive Alderton and Sir Edward Young.


title: Private Secretary to the Sovereign

text: Colonel Herbert Taylor, who was appointed in 1805, is acknowledged as the first Private Secretary to the Sovereign. However, the office was not formally established until 1867. Constitutionally there was some opposition on the part of Ministers to the creation of an office which might grow to have considerable influence upon the Sovereign. However, it was soon realised that the Sovereign was in need of secretarial support, since his or her Ministers had ceased to provide daily advice and support with the growth of ministerial government. Queen Victoria did not have a Private Secretary until she appointed General Charles Grey to the office in 1861; her husband Prince Albert had effectively been her secretary until his death.


title: Private Secretary to the Sovereign

text: The position of Private Secretary is regarded as equivalent to that of the permanent secretary of a government department. The incumbent is always made a Privy Counsellor on appointment, and has customarily received a peerage upon retirement (a life peerage since 1972, although a small number have been given hereditary titles). Until 1965, peerages granted to Private Secretaries were hereditary baronies, with the exception of Lord Knollys, who was created a viscount in 1911. All Private Secretaries since the time of Lord Stamfordham have been created peers, with the exceptions of Sir Alexander Hardinge (inherited his father's barony in 1944), Sir Alan Lascelles (declined as he felt titles to be a show of self-importance) and Sir William Heseltine (who is an Australian).


title: Private Secretary to the Sovereign

text: Private Secretaries to the Sovereign are always appointed Knights Bachelor (Kt), or knights of one of the orders of chivalry, typically the Order of The Bath. The same is true for Principal Private Secretaries to other members of the Royal Household, such as The Prince of Wales.


title: Private Secretary to the Sovereign

text: The Private Secretary is head of only one of the several operational divisions of the Royal Household. However, he or she is involved in co-ordination between various parts of the Household, and has direct control over the Press Office, the Royal Archives, and the office of the Defence Services Secretary.


title: Private Secretary to the Sovereign

text: The Private Secretary is responsible for liaising with the Cabinet Secretary, the Privy Council Office (PCO), and the Ministry of Justice's Crown Office in relation to:


title: Private Secretary to the Sovereign

text: Reporting to the Private Secretary is the role of Director for Security Liaison which was established following a recommendation of the Security Commission in 2004. The post was first held by Brigadier Jeffrey Cook, OBE MC, who was in office 2004-2008. The Private Secretary has general oversight of security policy, though the Master of the Household is also involved, and the Keeper of the Privy Purse has responsibility for the ceremonial bodyguards, such as the Gentlemen at Arms and the Yeomen of the Guard.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary is a town in Wake and Chatham counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina and is part of the Raleigh–Cary, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area. According to the 2020 Census, its population was 174,721, making it the seventh largest municipality in North Carolina, and the 148th largest in the United States. In 2021, the town's population had increased to 176,987.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary began as a railroad village and became known as an educational center in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In April 1907, Cary High School became the first state-funded public high school in North Carolina. The creation of the nearby Research Triangle Park in 1959 resulted in Cary's population doubling in a few years, tripling in the 1970s, and doubling in both the 1980s and 1990s. Cary is now the location of numerous technology companies, including the world's largest privately held software company.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: In Cary, 68.4% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, which is higher than the state average. In 2021, it was identified as the safest mid-sized city in the United States, based on 2019 FBI data. It also has a median household income of $107,463, higher than the county average of $83,567 or the state average of $56,642.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Before the arrival of European settlers, the Tuscarora people lived in what is now called Cary. In the 1750s, John Bradford moved to the area and opened an ordinary or inn, giving Cary its first name—Bradford's Ordinary. However, most of the land remained in the hands of two men, both named Nathaniel Jones. Arriving around 1775, Jones of White Plains plantation owned in eastern Cary, while Jones of Crabtree owned most of what is now western Cary. After the Revolutionary War, the community was on the road between the new capital in Raleigh and the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. In the early 19th-century, Eli Yates added a gristmill and sawmill to the community, while Rufus Jones founded the first free school in the 1840s, along with Asbury Methodist Church, the community's first church.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: In 1854, Bradford's Ordinary was linked to a major transportation route when the North Carolina Railroad came through the settlement, followed by the Chatham Railroad in 1868. The railroad tracks were laid mostly by enslaved people. Wake County farmer and lumberman Allison Francis "Frank" Page also arrived in 1854 and is credited with founding the town. For $2,000, Page purchased surrounding the planned railroad junction and built his home called Pages, a sawmill, and a general store. Page also donated for a railroad depot.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: The community was unofficially known as Page, Page's Siding, Page's Station, Page's Tavern, and Page's Turnout. In 1856, Page added a post office and became the town's first postmaster. Page named the community Cary because of his admiration for Samuel Fenton Cary, head of the Sons of Temperance in North America, who had delivered an oration in Raleigh two months prior.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: The Civil War did not come to Cary until April 16, 1865—the same day Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered—when 5,000 Confederate troops under General Wade Hampton III encamped there. The next day, Raleigh surrendered to Union General William T. Sherman, and Major General Francis Preston Blair Jr. led the XVII Corps (Union Army) into Cary and established headquarters at the Nancy Jones House, the former home of Jones of Crabtree that had become a tavern and stagecoach stop on the road between Raleigh and Chapel Hill. With Blair's arrival, Cary's enslaved population was emancipated; some went to Raleigh and joined the 135th U.S. Colored Troops. Blair remained in Cary until the surrender of Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston on April 27, 1865.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary's population grew after the Civil War with the completion of the Chatham Railroad junction. Around 1868, the town's first depot was built for the Chatham Railroad, and Page laid out residential lots and streets, including Academy and Chatham Streets. At the time, most of Cary's men worked for the railroads, but other businesses included a furniture factory, two shingle factories, a tannery, a shoe factory, a brick factory, and a window sash and blind factory. Around 1868, Page also built a Second Empire style hotel for railroad passengers, known today as the Page-Walker Hotel.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Page, Adolphus Jones, and Rufus Jones established Cary Academy, a private boarding school later known as the Female Institute and Cary Female Academy. The two-story school was built in 1870 on Page's land at the end of Academy Street with lumber milled on-site by Page. Other additions to the town included Page's tobacco warehouse, First Methodist Church, First Baptist Church, and the Cary Colored Christian Church (the latter on land donated by Page), along with two free schools for whites and two free schools for blacks.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary was incorporated on April 3, 1871, with Page serving as the first mayor. Its boundaries were established as , with the center being the Chatham Railroad warehouse. Because Page supported temperance, Cary's Act of Incorporation prohibited the sale of whiskey in the town's boundary and its surrounding ; an 1889 addition the Act of Incorporation also banned "any vinous, spirituous or malt liquors, cider or peach brandies". Page left Cary in 1880, following lumber opportunities in Moore County. However, Cary's prohibition law was in place until 1964 when it was superseded by State and county laws.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: The Raleigh and Augusta Air–Line Railroad arrived in Cary in 1879, creating Fetner Junction just north of downtown and spurring further growth. Sixteen Cary residents purchased Cary Academy in 1896 and converted it into the private boarding school, Cary High School, which had 248 students from across the state by 1900. When the North Carolina legislature passed a law establishing a system of public high schools in 1907, Cary High School was transferred to the State for $2,750, giving Cary its claim of having the first state-funded public high school in the state. Town bonds and the State funded a new brick school building in 1913; it was expanded in 1939 with WPA assistance. Today that structure survives as the Cary Arts Center.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: In the 1920s, the paved Western Wake Highway (now Western Blvd.) connected Cary to Raleigh via automobile, followed by paved roads to Durham and Apex. This enabled Cary's residents to commute for work, and the town's population grew by 64% during the decade. Electricity came to Cary in 1921. For the first time, Cary had housing developments, along with a volunteer fire department and municipal water and sewage system. During the Great Depression, the Bank of Cary failed, and the town went bankrupt. Conditions were so challenging that Cary had four mayors in two years.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: In the 1930s, a new North Carolina State University research farm supported Cary's farmers. One Cary garden club began growing gourds and showed their products and related crafts at the North Carolina State Fair. After the club's first annual Gourd Festival in 1944, they sent exhibits to the International Gourd Society Festival in Pasadena, California and took many prizes This earned Cary the nickname "Gourd Capital of the World," a designation reflected by gourds circling the original version of the town seal. Now named North Carolina Gourd Festival, the annual event moved to the North Carolina State Fairgrounds in 2000.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: After World War II, Cary began to attract industry, including the Taylor Biscuit Company (later Austin Foods), which became the town's largest employer with some 200 employees. Cary expanded its original single square mile boundary in 1949. The town gained its first supermarket, Piggy Wiggly, in 1950, followed by the Cary Public Library in 1960, and a town-funded fire department in 1961. The population and number of developments in Cary continued to increase in the 1960s and 1970s after the opening of the nearby Research Triangle Park (RTP) in 1959. This rapid growth was planned; the State built a four-lane road between Cary and the Research Triangle Park as part of the agreement to attract RTP to North Carolina. Historian Jordan R. Bauer says, "The sleepy town of Cary...was the ideal place for an emerging class of scientific and technical workers".


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Initially, Cary adopted zoning and other ordinances on an ad hoc basis to control growth and give the town structure, including its first subdivision regulations in 1961 and a zoning and land-use plan in 1963. In 1971, the town created Planned Unit Development (PUD) zoning, which lets a developer plan an entire community before beginning construction, allowing future residents to know where churches, schools, commercial, and industrial areas will be located in advance. Developed on the Pine State Dairy's former Kildaire Farm, the Kildaire Farms development in Cary was North Carolina's first PUD.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: In 1960, Cary's population was 3,356, but by 2000 it had grown to 94,536. Concerned about forty years of steady growth, in 2008 the town council commissioned the "Cary Historic Preservation Master Plan" to establish a coordinated approach to historic preservation. Cary now has three districts recognized by the National Register of Historic Places: the Carpenter Historic District, the Green Level Historic District, and the Cary Historic District. In addition, the town has designed ten local landmarks which receive a property tax break in exchange for oversight of exterior changes to the structures by the town's Historic Preservation Commission.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Located in the piedmont region of North Carolina, most of Cary is in western Wake County, with neighborhood-sized sections in the northeast corner of Chatham County. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Cary has a total area of . Cary is bordered on the north and east by Raleigh, generally toward the north by Research Triangle Park and Morrisville, on the south by Apex and Holly Springs, and on the west by the Jordan Lake area.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary is seated on the boundary between the Durham Basin with its softer sedimentary rocks and the piedmont with its harder metamorphic rocks; both geologic provinces have igneous rock intrusions. The landscape is typically gentle to moderate sloping hills separated by narrow V-shaped valleys, but there are areas with steeper slopes and broader, U-shaped valleys in western Cary, roughly along NC 55 near the Research Triangle Park and north of Green Hope School Road. Cary's average elevation is .


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: The Cary drainage basin includes three main creeks—the Crabtree, the Swift, and the Walnut—which are all tributaries of the Neuse River. Most streams in the area have narrow floodplains with riverine wetlands, but Crabtree, Middle, Swift, and White Oak Creeks are larger and have broader floodplains. There are several small lakes in the area, most notably Lake Crabtree, created for flood control of Crabtree Creek. Jordan Lake is a large reservoir, flood control, and recreational facility that abuts part of western Cary.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Suburbanization is the typical land use in Cary. However, some areas are still undeveloped forests or agricultural, such as the agricultural areas west of NC 55 in Green Level, Upper Middle Creek and the Carpenter community. There is a mixture of mature conifers and broadleaf trees in Cary's parks, nature preserves, and older subdivisions such as Farmington Woods, Greenwood Forest, and Kildaire Farms because tree preservation was a key design element. According to the "Town of Cary Land Use Plan", newer construction in Cary, both residential and commercial, shows "less regard for tree preservation and replanting."


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary has a humid subtropical climate ("Cfa") under the Köppen climate classification system, with hot summers, mildly cold winters with of snow annually, and several months of pleasant weather each year. Temperature extremes in Cary range from the negatives to over . Tropical cyclones can affect Cary, usually after weakening substantially from being over land. Some, such as Hurricane Fran in 1996, have caused great damage in the area.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: As of the 2020 United States Census, there were 174,721 residents of Cary residing in 62,789 households. The population density of Cary is 3,014 people per , versus 1078.8 for Wake County and 196.1 for North Carolina.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: According to the American Community Survey, an estimated 68.4% of adults in Cary age 25 years or older have a bachelor's degree or higher. In addition, 97.9% of Cary's households are estimated to have a computer, and 95.2% have broadband.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: During the 1970s and 1980s, the high number of non-native-born North Carolinians moving to the town for employment in the Research Triangle Park led native-born North Carolinians to refer to Cary derisively as "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees". As of the 2020 Census, 28.97% of Cary's population was born in North Carolina, 77.87% were born in the United States, and 22.13% were foreign-born.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: According to the 2020 Census, the median household income in Cary is $106,304 or $57,341 per capita. The percentage of Cary's residents living in poverty is 4.4%, and just 6.3% of its population under the age of 65 lacked health insurance. Between 2015 and 2019, the median value of owner-occupied houses in Cary was $356,400. The homeownership rate (owner-occupied housing units to total units) is 68.4%. However, there are growing concerns about Cary's lack of affordable housing. Over the past twenty years, Cary has added 10,000 jobs earning $35,000 or less; however, the cost of housing has increased significantly. The Town of Cary says that less than 20% of its employees can afford to live in the town. The median rental cost in Cary is $1,246 per month. The cost of living in Cary is rated at 115, with 100 being the national average.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Notable technology companies located in Cary include ABB, Epic Games, Garmin, HCL Technologies, IntelliScanner Corporation, Lockheed Martin 3D Solutions, SAS Institute, and Xerox.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Manufacturers located in Cary include Austin Foods/Kellogg's which makes snack foods, and Lord Corporation which makes adhesives, coatings, and motion management devices for aerospace and automobiles. Cotton Incorporated is a non–profit located in Cary which conducts worldwide research and promotes the use of cotton.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary's public art collection includes more than forty works displayed in public spaces throughout the town. Many of the town's facilities include art gallery spaces with changing exhibits, including the Bond Park Community Center, the Cary Arts Center, the Cary Senior Center, the Cary Town Hall Gallery, the Herbert C. Young Community Center, and the Page–Walker Arts & History Center.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: The Cary History Museum is located in the Page-Walker Arts and History Center and features a timeline exhibit of local history. The Stevens Nature Center is located at the Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve and has interactive nature and history exhibits. The BIG Pictures Museum Without Walls is the town's traveling outdoor exhibit.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Town-owned performance venues include the Cary Arts Center, Koka Booth Amphitheatre, and Sertoma Amphitheatre at Bond Park. The town also operates a multi-use cultural facility in a renovated movie theater called The Cary Theater.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: The Cary community supports a wide variety of public events throughout the year. An annual tradition since 1959, Cary Band Day brings high school marching bands from across the southeast to compete in one of the oldest and best-known regional competitions. Cary supports artists with two festivals: Spring Daze Arts & Crafts Festival and Lazy Daze Arts & Crafts Festival. For the latter, the town closes the main downtown roads for two days, a tradition since 1976.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Numerous multicultural events showcase the diversity of Cary. The annual Diwali Celebration, the Indian Festival of Light, features an exhibition of Indian art and culture with music, dance, handicrafts, and food. Presented by Asian Focus and the town, the Greater Triangle Area Dragon Boat Festival includes displays, food, performances, and dragon boat races between club and community teams. Founded in 2004, the Ritmo Latino Festival showcases music, art, dance, and food from the Hispanic world. One of the newest annual events in Cary, the North Carolina Chinese Lantern Festival is quickly becoming a town favorite with its illuminating nighttime celebration of the Chinese New Year with more than 2,500 handcrafted silk lanterns.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: The oldest structures in Cary, the Nancy Jones House and the Utley–Council House are both examples of regional Federal architecture. The Page–Walker Hotel was built in Empire style; the former hotel is now open to the public as a museum.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: The Cary Historic District is located two blocks south of downtown and includes a variety of 19th and 20th-century structures of note. Architectural styles that were popular in the 19th century are represented by the Gothic revival Ivey–Ellington House built , the simple Victorian style of the Marcus Baxter Dry House built , and the Queen Anne style of the Sam–Jones cottage built and the Captain Harrison P. Guess House (aka the Guess–White–Ogle House) built in 1830 and 1900. Other structures in the Cary Historic District represent early 20th-century architectural styles such as the Tudor Revival style Henry Adams House, the Colonial Revival style Dr. Frank W. House, and the brick bungalow style Dr. John Pullen Hunter House. The district also includes the former Cary High School which is a substantial Neo Classical structure that was designed and built in 1939 by the Works Progress Administration, and the related Pasmore House, dating from , which was a boarding house for the former high school. The former school is open to the public as the Cary Arts Center.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Located in western Cary, the Carpenter Historic District is a former rural crossroads that features late Victorian and Colonial Revival buildings, dating from 1895 to 1933. The primary structure in the district is the brick Carpenter Farm Supply Company which has been described as "the most substantial early twentieth-century store building in rural Wake County". Other contributing buildings to the historic district include houses, an assemblage of farming structures, and other commercial structures. The most prominent house is the William Henry Carpenter Boarding House which features a simple Victorian porch and gable ornamentation and was used as a residence for railroad workers.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary's Green Level Historic District is located in western Cary, just east of the Chatham County line in the White Oak township. Its includes a late 19th to early 20th-century crossroads centered around the intersection of Green Level Church Road and Green Level West Road and a railroad spur. Most historic structures in the district are along Green Level Church Road, including community buildings, farms, houses, and stores. The 1907 Green Level Baptist Church is one of the best examples of rural church architecture in Wake County. This Gothic Revival church was the "visual and social focal point of the community". The A.M. and Vallaria Council Farm is a good example of a late 19th-century tobacco farm, with its related tobacco barns and other secondary buildings dating to the 1900s through the 1930s. The Alious H. and Daisey Mills farmhouse is the largest building in the historic district and features a hip roof and slender Doric columns on its porch. It is located across the road and east of the church, on property that includes other historic houses, including a store and farm buildings ranging from a potato shed to a well-house. The two-story Alious Mills Store was built around 1916 and expanded in the 1930s. The one-story Vick and Mattie Council House was built in the 19th century and featured Victorian detailing, such as patterned shingles and decorative vents. The one-story Kenneth and Reba Mills House is an example of a 1930s Tudor Revival.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: SAS Institute has led the way in bringing modern high-rise architecture to Cary but has placed its 25 buildings in a parklike setting away from the historic core of town. SAS's Building A is ten-stories tall with 990 offices and several two-story atriums. One writer notes, "The design of its headquarters reflects both its status as a tech giant and its original academic routes." For example, eight solar installations power part of the SAS campus. Building Q is a six-story LEED Gold certified office building that is not only sustainable with features such as a green roof, but is also "light-filled, comfortable, and functional" according to LS3P architects. Building Q also has artwork on every floor; the SAS art collection includes some 4,600 works.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary is also home to the Sri Venkateswara Temple which has an tall Rajagopuram, or monumental entrance tower, making it the tallest structure of its kind in the United States. This Hindu temple is modeled after the famous Sri Venkateswara Temple in Tirupathi in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. Bhaskar Venepalli, a trustee of the temple, says, "This is an iconic structure, not only for Cary, but for the whole United States."


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary is home to two professional sports teams: the North Carolina FC (USL League One) and the North Carolina Courage (National Women's Soccer League). Sahlen's Stadium at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary is the home venue for both soccer teams.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: WakeMed Soccer Park has been the host site for NCAA Men's Division I Soccer championships. As of 2007, Cary is also home of the USA Baseball National Training Complex, located within the Thomas Brooks Park. The complex was selected to host the NCAA Division II baseball tournament in 2009–2016, 2018–2019, and 2021 to date.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary has more than thirty public parks and natural areas. Notable parks include the Fred G. Bond Metro Park, Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve, and William B. Umstead State Park.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: The Cary Tennis Park is one of the most extensive public tennis facilities in the southeastern United States and features 32 courts, including a championship stadium. In 2019, the facility was one of 25 locations in the United States recognized for "excellence in the construction" by the United States Tennis Association.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Despite its sizable population, Cary is classified as a "town" because that is how it was incorporated with the State; North Carolina has no legal distinction between a city and a town for size. Cary has a council-manager government; the mayor and council members serve a four-year term, with half of the council seats being up for election each odd-numbered year. Four of the six council seats are elected by single-member districts; the remaining two seats are elected as at-large representatives, meaning they must attract a majority of votes across the whole town. Notable mayors include Fred Bond Jr. (1971–1983), Glen Lang (1999–2003), and Harold Weinbrecht (2007–present).


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: As of August 2022, the town council consists of mayor Harold Weinbrecht and representatives Jennifer Robinson (District A), Don Frantz (District B, Mayor Pro Tem), Jack W. Smith (District C), Ya Liu (District D), Lori Bush (at-large), and Ed Yerha (at-large). On October 9, 2007, Weinbrecht defeated incumbent mayor Ernie McAlister in the 2007 mayoral election. Citizen concerns that rapid growth was adversely affecting infrastructure and environment over the effect rapid growth was having on the town, especially on roads, schools, and the environment, led to McAlister's ouster and Weinbrecht's reelection in 2011, 2015, and 2019.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: On December 26, 2009, "The Nation" reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had secret prisons in the United States, where it held suspected illegal immigrants indefinitely before deportation. It reported that at least one of these secret federal prisons was allegedly located in an office building in Cary. Part of the federal government's Department of Homeland Security, ICE has leased an office in Cary for more than ten years. However, both ICE and the town says that no detainees are kept overnight at this location.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Headquartered in Cary, the Wake County Public School System is the largest public school system in North Carolina. Cary has five public high schools: Cary High School, Green Hope High School, Green Level High School, Middle Creek High School, and Panther Creek High School. The town has seven middle schools and nineteen elementary schools that are part of the Wake County system.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary has three charter schools: the K–8 grade Cardinal Charter Academy, the K–7 grade Peak Charter Academy, and the K–11 grade Triangle Math and Science Academy.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Public transit within the town is provided by GoCary, with six fixed–routes. There is a door-to-door service for senior citizens and riders with disabilities. GoTriangle operates fixed-route buses that serve Wake County and connect to Go transit systems in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Amtrak's Silver Star, Carolinian, and Piedmont passenger trains stop at the Cary Station, providing service to Charlotte, New York City, Miami, and intermediate points. Constructed in 1995 and expanded in 2011, the station includes 130 free parking spaces.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: In 2010, the League of American Bicyclists designated Cary as one of the fourteen recipients of the first "Bicycle-Friendly Community" awards for "providing safe accommodation and facilities for bicyclists and encouraging residents to bike for transportation and recreation". Cary maintains over of bike-friendly road and greenways facilities. In addition, U.S. Bicycle Route 1 (Carolina Connector) and N.C. Bicycle Route #2, (Mountains to Sea), both pass through suburban Cary.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary maintains a network of of greenways and trails that connect neighborhoods and parks throughout the town. The American Tobacco Trail, built on a retired section of railroad, passes through parts of Cary.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: The Raleigh–Durham International Airport (RDU) is north of Cary and covers more than 35 nonstop destinations with twelve carriers. RDU served nearly 8.8 million passengers in 2021. This is down from the pre-COVID-19 pandemic number of 14.2 million passengers a year in 2019.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary is linked to areas both in and out of North Carolina via the east-west running Interstate 40, the north-south running U.S. 1, and the east-west running U.S. 64. State highways in Cary include NC 54, NC 55, and NC 540. Another major route in the town is the Cary Parkway.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Cary has many choices for primary care physicians, from alternative medicine to practices that are connected to Duke University Health System, UNC Medical Center, UNC Rex Healthcare, and WakeMed. WakeMed Cary Hospital, a full-service hospital with 208 acute care beds, is also located in Cary.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: Duke Energy provides electricity for Cary. Dominion Energy has provided natural gas to Cary since 2019, when it acquired the Public Service Company of North Carolina. Cary's primary water source is the B. Everett Jordan Reservoir (also known as Jordan Lake), which is treated at the Cary/Apex Water Treatment Facility. Water and sewage accounts are overseen by the Town of Cary. Cary also provides bi-weekly curbside recycling.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: In 2016, Cary created its Simulated Smart City Program, which allows the town to test and evaluate Internet of Things (IoT) and smart city technologies in its town hall campus. Technologies already tested and expanded into the community include sensors for public parking that reveal available spots, smart street lights that dim when not needed, smart trash and recycling containers that message when they are full, and free outdoor Wi-Fi via beacons. The first town-wide IoT project was a smart water monitoring system with analytics from the SAS Institute, which can detect leaks. The National Recreation and Park Association noted, "These technologies offer more than just cost savings for the city of Cary. They also provide convenient quality-of-life improvements for citizens, and in many cases help lower environmental waste." Cary and SAS also collaborated on an IoT stormwater flood alert system, winning the 2020 IDC Smart Cities North American Awards (Smart Water Category) and the 2020 Government Innovation Award (Leveraging IoT for Increased Flood Protection).


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: In 2021, Cary installed IoT and smart city technologies that give emergency vehicles faster access through pedestrian crossings, railroad crossings, school zones, and traffic lights. This is the first citywide system like this in North Carolina. Paid for by the town with a matching grant from the U.S Department of Transportation, this project involved fifteen pedestrian crossings, 100 school safety beacons, 205 traffic signals, and railroad crossings.


title: Cary, North Carolina

text: In late 2021, Cary announced a new tech-focused Center of Excellence that brings together the town, SAS, and Semtech Corporation, to create new community services and expand the digital infrastructure. "Connected World" says, "In the quest for developing smarter cities across the country, ...the town of Cary, N.C., is one of the smartest towns in the United States".


title: Shine (film)

text: Shine is a 1996 Australian biographical psychological drama film based on the life of David Helfgott, a pianist who suffered a mental breakdown and spent years in institutions.


title: Shine (film)

text: The film stars Geoffrey Rush, Lynn Redgrave, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Noah Taylor, John Gielgud, Googie Withers, Justin Braine, Sonia Todd, Nicholas Bell, Chris Haywood, and Alex Rafalowicz. The film was directed by Scott Hicks. The screenplay was written by Jan Sardi.


title: Shine (film)

text: "Shine" had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. In 1996, Geoffrey Rush was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 69th Academy Awards for his performance in the lead role.


title: Shine (film)

text: A young man wanders through a heavy rainstorm, finding his way into a nearby restaurant. The restaurant's employees try to determine if he needs help. Despite his manic mode of speech being difficult to understand, a waitress, Sylvia, learns that his name is David Helfgott and that he is staying at a local hotel. Sylvia returns him to the hotel, and despite his attempts to engage her with his musical knowledge and ownership of various musical scores, she leaves.


title: Shine (film)

text: As a child, David is growing up in suburban Adelaide, South Australia and competing in the musical competition of a local Eisteddfod. Helfgott has been taught to play by his father, Peter, who is obsessed with winning and has no tolerance for imperfection, dishonour and disobedience. While playing at the Eisteddfod, David is noticed by Mr. Rosen, a local piano teacher who, after initial resistance from Peter, takes over David's musical instruction.


title: Shine (film)

text: As a teenager, David wins the state musical championship and is invited by concert violinist Isaac Stern to study in United States. Plans are made to raise money to send David off to America. Initially, his family is supportive, but then Peter forbids David to leave, thinking his absence would destroy the family. To make matters worse, Peter begins physically and mentally abusing David, which causes strain to the rest of the family.


title: Shine (film)

text: Crushed, David continues to study and befriends local novelist and co-founder of the Communist Party of Australia, Katharine Susannah Prichard. David's talent grows until he is offered a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London. This time, David is able to break away from his father with the encouragement of Katharine. However, his father issues an ultimatum, effectively banishing David and saying that David will never return home and never be anybody's son.


title: Shine (film)

text: In London, David studies under Dr. Cecil Parkes and enters a Concerto competition, choosing to play Sergei Rachmaninoff's enormously demanding 3rd Concerto, a piece he had attempted to learn as a young child to make his father proud.


title: Shine (film)

text: As David practices, his behavior becomes increasingly unhinged. David wins the competition, but collapses and suffers a mental breakdown. Admitted to a psychiatric hospital, David receives electric shock therapy to treat his condition. David recovers to the point where he is able to return to Australia. However, his attempts to reconcile with his father are rebuffed due to the latter's mindset that David abandoned his family. This causes David to relapse and he is forced to be readmitted to a mental institution.


title: Shine (film)

text: Years later, a volunteer at the institution recognizes David and knows of his musical talent. The woman takes him home but discovers that he is difficult to control, unintentionally destructive, and needs more care than she can offer. As time passes, David has difficulty adjusting to life in broader society again, and often leaves the hotel to stimulate his interests.