From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Thu Jul 08 2004 - 05:54:48 PDT
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Headline: In hunt for E.T., a giant leap
For years, scientists have been listening for faint whispers of E.T.
The answer to that question looms closer, thanks to boosts in funding,
The field "is in a stage of explosive growth," says Kent Cullers,
A decade ago, the idea of searching for intelligent life drew more
One factor is scientific opportunity. Astronomers are finding a growing
Another factor is rising technological horsepower. From cheaper, faster
Yet for all their efforts, scientists have come up empty-handed. But
"The fraction of the galaxy we've searched ... is incredibly small,"
When US astronomer Frank Drake first turned a radio dish to the heavens
New clout
The field is also finding new respectability. In its latest 10-year
Moreover, NASA - which ended its own SETI project in 1993 after it
"SETI was once a four-letter word around NASA headquarters," Cullers
High on the list of projects is the Allen Telescope Array, a new type
In March, former Microsoft executive Paul Allen announced that he was
The facility is of broad interest to radio astronomers in general
Cullers notes that current research goals include giving radio-based
If radio has been the preferred approach for seeking out other
Laser bursts represent one possibility, says Paul Horowitz, a physics
Up to now, he and his colleagues at Harvard and Princeton University
One wavelength of emerging interest lies in infrared light, which falls
Irradiating civilization?
At the time, it sounded like an intriguing approach. But astronomers
Dr. Werthimer and colleague Charles Conroy have taken an initial crack
While they found 32 stars that might have been Dyson Sphere candidates
Other scientists are contemplating the possibility of searching for
Trying to expand efforts to cover a range of wavelengths and
Is anybody out there?
* From 1947 to 1969, the US Air Force studied UFOs under Project Blue
* During several space missions, NASA astronauts reported phenomena
* Congress ended funding for NASA's High Resolution Microwave Survey in
* Project Phoenix searched more than 750 nearby stars for radio signals.
Sources: NASA, SETI
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: Thu Jul 08 2004 - 06:05:16 PDT
http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/send-story?2004/0708/p14s02-stss.txt
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0708/p14s02-stss.html
Byline: Peter N. Spotts Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 07/08/2004
phoning anyone in electronic earshot. Now, some researchers are hearing
sounds almost as exciting - the staccato of hammers, the crackle of arc
welders, and the rumble of construction equipment - that signal the
building of huge new telescopes to help answer an old question: Are we
alone in the galaxy?
facilities, astronomical discoveries, and advances in technology.
Researchers say within a few years they'll be able to conduct far more
exhaustive searches for civilizations beyond our solar system.
director of research and development at the SETI Institute in Mountain
View, Calif. "I'm not only excited, I'm ebullient."
sneers than cheers in some circles. Congress was skeptical. NASA ended
its small-scale program, leaving the search to private efforts. Now,
interest is building again.
number of planets around other stars - hinting at a potentially vast
number of solar systems in the galaxy. NASA is planning two telescopes
specifically designed to look for Earth-like planets outside our solar
system, which could allow for more-targeted searches.
computers to devices better able to detect and process extremely weak
signals, technologies are allowing researchers to expand their searches
beyond radio waves and visible light. At least two new ground-based
telescopes are under construction dedicated to the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). In August, top SETI scientists
will meet at Harvard University to look at potential new projects.
even that serves as a goad.
Dr. Cullers says - perhaps 700 sunlike stars out of billions. "If we
tie ourselves to the growth of computing, within half a century the
search will be billions of times larger than it is today."
to listen for ET signals in 1960, he tuned in only one channel, says
Dan Werthimer, an astronomer and SETI pioneer at the University of
California at Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory. In the 1970s, new
receivers could monitor 100 channels at once; today, astronomers can
monitor roughly 168 million channels simultaneously - and the number
doubles every year, he adds.
survey of key questions in astronomy and astrophysics and the
experiments needed to answer them, a National Research Council panel
listed a telescope being built by the SETI Institute and UC Berkeley as
a project worth supporting. Although the panel has endorsed SETI
efforts in previous reports, its 2001 document was the first to endorse
a private, nonprofit SETI effort.
raised some eyebrows in Congress - has included one of the SETI
Institute's scientists in its virtual Astrobiology Institute.
says. Now SETI researchers can compete for research money "under the
same conditions as everyone else."
of radio telescope being designed for the Hat Creek observatory site
run by the University of California at Berkeley. When completed, the
facility will boast 350 linked dishlike antennas covering a hectare, or
about 2.5 acres. Sophisticated electronics will allow observers to
study signals from different objects simultaneously within the
antennas' field of view. Thus, SETI astronomers can search the sky
around the clock for signals from E.T. while other astronomers study
interstellar clouds, hunt for dark matter, or pursue other objectives.
contributing $13.5 million toward the facility's expansion. An initial
Paul G. Allen Foundation donation of $11.5 million is funding the first
32 antennas, expected to be installed and operating by the end of the
year. This latest announcement covers another 174 dishes - if the SETI
Institute and the Berkeley lab building the array can raise $16 million
in matching funds.
because it represents an American entry in an international design
competition for an even bigger array of radio telescopes covering
nearly 250 acres. The Square Kilometer Array is slated to begin
operating in 2020, after scientists select the site for the observatory
and pick the technology that will be used. The Allen Telescope Array
represents a major step forward, allowing SETI scientists to search up
to 1 million stars in a fraction of the time it would take using
single-observer telescopes.
SETI projects an ability to look for signals simultaneously in a range
of different transmission modes - including more complex signals, such
as those used by cellphones.
civilizations in the galaxy, researchers also have started looking for
various forms of light as a medium of communication.
professor at Harvard University who is hunting for E.T. with optical
telescopes. With 20th-century earthbound technology, he points out,
it's possible to take the most powerful lasers, generate a pulse
lasting only a billionth of a second or so, then send it "backwards"
through a large telescope. Viewed from afar, such a burst would be
5,000 times as bright as the sun. Because light from the laser and from
the star dims at the same rate, "if you can see the star, you can see
the flash," he says.
have observed 15,000 stars and come up empty. But they now are building
a 72-inch telescope that will allow them to survey large patches of sky
at a time. They plan to begin operating the telescope - funded by a
$350,000 grant from the Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif. - within
a year. Other teams at facilities such as the Lick Observatory in
California are also running more selective searches.
just below visible light on the electromagnetic spectrum. Looking in
that wavelength regime was first proposed by Freeman Dyson of the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. In 1959, he suggested
that advanced civilizations might build orbiting habitats and
solar-power stations that formed a "shell" around a star at a distance
that matched that of the civilization's home planet. Such a "Dyson
Sphere" would emit large amounts of infrared radiation, giving the star
the appearance of emitting too much infrared light.
have since learned that sunlike stars - especially those with disks of
dust and gas surrounding them - can appear to generate too much
infrared radiation for their type.
at looking for excess IR by picking sunlike stars that are too old to
have protoplanetary disks. Instead of bidding for precious telescope
time, they mined data archived from surveys taken by ground- and
space-based infrared telescopes.
based on infrared readings alone, they found no unusual radio emissions
or light pulses from 20 of the stars observed at the Arecibo Radio
Telescope in Puerto Rico or from 25 of the stars viewed at optical
observatories.
pulses from infrared lasers. Such lasers might be a preferred means of
sending signals or setting up beacons across the galaxy because the
light penetrates interstellar dust that can block visible light,
researchers say.
transmission types as the technology becomes available may seem like
casting good money after bad. But limiting searches to one form of
communication or to one type of search strategy is futile, Werthimer
counters. "It's naive to think we know exactly what E.T. is doing."
Book, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Of
12,618 total sightings reported to Project Blue Book, 701 remain
unidentified.
they could not explain; NASA later determined that, in the context of
space, none of the observations could be termed abnormal.
1993; as a result, SETI launched the private nine-year Project Phoenix,
which ended in March.