SUBJECT: SCANNING SKIES FOR ALIEN LIFE FILE: UFO2832
BY MELODY PETERSEN Mercury News
In an Australian sheep pasture, Santa Clara County researchers are working day
and night to prepare for the most sweeping search ever for intelligent life
outside the Earth.
Using the huge Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales and truck filled with
Silicon Valley computers, the group from Mountain View's SETI Institute will
begin to listen for cosmic conversation between aliens at 4 p.m. Wednesday,
California time.
Serious science
Although it may sound like something straight out of a supermarket tabloid --
Scientists to Eavesdrop on Aliens! --this is serious stuff, at least 30 years
in the making. The scientists and technicians take pains not to promise too
much in their search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which they abbreviate
as SETI. There are too many unknowns.
But they declare proudly that this search is far more advanced than any to
date.
"We could have success at any step," said SETI physicist John Dreher, "but
we're prepared for the long journey. It might take a decade. It might take a
century."
Even that long wait would be worth it, researchers say, since the earthly
impacts of overhearing an unearthly discussion would be profound.
Would end a lot of conflict
"It would be a historic event that would galvanize humanity into a more
cohesive body," said Barney Oliver, a retired Hewlett-Packare vice president
who has worked with Mountain View's SETI Institute since 1971. "To realize
we're one of many civilizations would create a bond between us here on Earth
and end a lot of social conflict."
During the five-month experiment known as Project Phoenix, scientists will use
the 210-foot-diameter Parkes antenna -- the largest in the southern hemisphere
-- to eavesdrop on sounds in the vicinities of 200 nearby stars. Because the
carefully chosen stars are similar to our sun, they are more likely than most
to have a planet like Earth circling them.
Researchers will listen for signals that intelligent beings may have
intentionally sent our way, said SETI scientist Seth Shostak, or for signals
that may have inadvertently escaped from a distant planet much like " the
sounds of 'I Love Lucy' come off the earth."
28 million radio channels
SETI's high-speed computers, shipped to Australia from Mountain View, will
analyze some 28 million radio channels at once.
"Unfortunately , ET didn't send us a postcard to tell us where on the radio
dial we could find him," Shostak said.
To the SETI computers, an artificially produced extraterrestrial signal would
look much like a lone tree sticking out in a wide field of scrub.
Although searches for cosmic radio signals began 35 years ago, Project Phoenix
uses equipment that can search 28 million channels -- three times as many as
the last search -- said SETI President Frank Drake, who carried out the first
such search in 1960. Plus, scientists can now check out any unusual signal
immediately. Before scientists gathered sounds and analyzed the data later.
"This experiment is thousands to a million times better in the technical sense
than previous experiments have been," Shostak said. "Will we hear something
before the millennium? Yes, I think we will."
Shostak may be one of the more optimistic scientists, but even the National
Academy of Sciences has praised SETI's approach. Project Phoenix is a smaller
version of a 10-year NASA program that was abruptly canceled by Congress in
the fall of 1993 after on senator called it the "great Martian chase." NASA
had spent $60 million on the search, including $30 million on equipment.
But with $4 million in donations from some of the high-tech industry's most
powerful players -- including David Packard and William R. Hewlett, founders
of Hewlett-Packard; Gordon Moore, co-founder and chairman of Intel; and Paul
Allen, Microsoft's co-founder and owner of the Portland Trail Blazers
basketball team -- the non-profit SETI Institute was able to upgrade the NASA
equipment to continue the search.
Researchers plan to complete their 200-star survey at Parkes, a town about 250
miles west of Sydney, in June. It is not easy duty; Shostak notes that Parkes
has one of the highest concentrations anywhere of poisonous snakes and
spiders. After finishing their work there, they will move to radio telescopes
in the northern hemisphere, where they plan to look at 1,000 stars by the year
2000.
In their search for unearthly life, the scientists are motivated as much by
skepticism as optimism. Almost to a person, they do not believe in UFOs.
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