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From: Stig_Agermose@online.pol.dk (Stig Agermose)
To: updates@globalserve.net
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 01:38:48 +0200
Subject: Report From The "Life In The Universe Conference"
>From the San Francisco Examiner via the Nando Times. URL:
http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/health/041498/health8_4021_noframes.ht
ml
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Scientists study radio signals for signs of life out there
Copyright =A91998 Nando.net
Copyright =A91998 Scripps Howard=20
BERKELEY, Calif. (April 14, 1998 08:43 a.m. EDT http://www.nando.net)
-- At this instant, radio signals from alien worlds might be passing
through our atmosphere, through your home, through your very body.
Earthbound scientists hope to develop receivers "smart" enough to sense
these faint messages messages from planets trillions of miles away.
Almost four decades after astronomer Frank Drake launched the quest for
alien radio signals, the search continues in once unimagined ways,
scientists said at a recent seminar at Lawrence Hall of Science, ways
that include:
*Computers so smart and fast that they scan billions of celestial radio
frequencies simultaneously, seeking just one that resembles an alien
communique.
*Alien-detecting radiotelescope dishes the size of Volkswagens,
operated by amateur enthusiasts and united in globe-girdling "arrays"
that would monitor the entire sky 24 hours a day.
*Space telescopes, still on the drawing board, that might scan distant
star systems for potentially life-bearing planets -- perhaps
bluish-green, icecap-peaked, Earth-like worlds whose blurry mug shots
may make front pages before today's youngsters are middle-aged.
In what at times resembled an intellectual PTA meeting, an enthusiastic
audience of about 150, ranging from Berkeley scientists to parents with
kids, attended the "Life in the Universe Conference" sponsored by the
Astronomical Association of Northern California and the Lawrence Hall
of Science. The topics discussed also included the possibility of
prehistoric microbial life on Mars.
Since the mid-1990s, scientists seeking out alien life have been
thrilled by repeated discoveries of planets that orbit other stars.
Previously, skeptics had argued that our solar system is a galactic
freak, and that almost all other stars are planetless and, hence,
lifeless.
In reality, "planets are aands for Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence.
Consequently, "'E.T.' has plenty of 'homes' to phone home to," joked
Shostak, who has a doctorate in astronomy from Caltech. His book on
SETI, "Sharing the Universe," was recently published by Berkeley Hills
Books of Berkeley.
Shostak estimates that one to 10 billion -- that's right, billion with
a "b" -- Earth-like planets might swarm throughout the Milky Way
galaxy. The galaxy is a vaguely pinwheel-shaped city of several hundred
billion stars. The entire universe contains roughly 100 billion
galaxies.
Jill Tarter, project director of the SETI Institute's Project Phoenix,
described how she and her colleagues are searching for alien signals
from about 1,000 nearby stars with radiotelescopes in West Virginia and
Georgia.
The radiotelescopes detect natural radio "noise" from across the
cosmos. Then the signals are scanned by high-speed computers trillions
of times faster than anything at Drake's disposal when he first started
looking for alien messages while working at a Green Bank, W.Va.,
radiotelescope in1960.
The computers are programmed to look for unusual events -- say, a
continuous sound like a beacon from a civilization that is trying to
call attention to itself.
Likewise, aliens with radiotelescopes might detect television signals
from Earth, said Dan Werthimer, director of a SETI project based at
UC-Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory.
In terms of the intensity of television wavelength emissions, "the
Earth is now 'brighter' than the sun," Werthimer said.
Tarter referred favorably to one private group's efforts to enlist
amateur observers in the SETI search. Using converted satellite dishes,
thousands of amateurs could scan the skies for alien messages. Such
comprehensive coverage of the sky might make it easier to detect
transient signals from aliens whose beacons aren't switched on full
time, Tarter said.
Is SETI a waste of time? Skeptical evolutionary biologists argue that
the emergence of intelligent life on Earth was a chance event so chancy
that it's unlikely to be repeated elsewhere.
Even if the galaxy is jammed with intelligent creatures, intelligence
may tend to emerge only for brief periods. That's because, according to
pessimists, intelligent beings tend to self-destruct -- say, by
inventing nuclear weapons or spoiling their planetary environments.
If that's true, then humans may have no one else to talk to in the
entire galaxy, at least at the moment. The Milky Way galaxy may be a
wasteland of dead civilizations buried in their own toxic waste and
radioactive ashes.
Shostak is more optimistic. He recently proposed that civilizations
typically pass through a bottleneck in time lasting a few centuries
during which they are capable of total self-destruction. For humans,
that period began in 1945, with the development of atomic weapons.
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