From: Ufojoe1  [Joe Murgia]
Date: Fri, 2 Jan 1998 11:49:57 EST
To: updates@globalserve.net
Subject: UFO UpDate: SETI "out of tune" after all these years?
In Search for Intelligent Life, Did They Get a Wrong Number?
By Robert Cooke. STAFF WRITER
After straining for decades to find hints of intelligent life in
space, astronomers now suspect their big radio receivers have
been tuned in wrong all along.
Recently, research has shown that radio signals from afar suffer
fading and distortion as they pass through the long reaches of
space. But the systems designed to listen for alien radio signals
 - called SETI, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence -
were set up under the assumption that any signal coming from
another civilization would be a continued or repeating signal.
This could mean the current SETI programs have already recorded
real messages, without recognizing them, said researchers James
Cordes, Joseph Lazio and the late Carl Sagan, all of Cornell
University. The scientists discussed their conclusions in a
research report published recently in the Astrophysical Journal.
Over the years, SETI programs have recorded a few intriguing
signals that seemed to meet all the criteria except one, the
report said. The missing criterion was repeatability; the signals
were never detected again, despite intensive listening.
Now, Sagan, Lazio and Cordes say that a close look shows the
follow-up observations made on the sources were inadequate -
one-tenth of what was needed in terms of sensitivity. Better work
is needed to distinguish between accidents, including signals
from satellites or radio transmissions from Earth-bound sources,
and genuine messages coming from across the galaxy, they said.
Physicist Paul Horowitz, director of a SETI search called Project
Beta, which uses a big dish-shaped radio telescope in Harvard,
Mass., said these ideas have already been incorporated into the
automated search system. The computer now conducts 120 follow-ups
on each interesting signal that is detected.
And Jill Tartar, at the SETI Institute in California, said her
system has already used more sensitive equipment in Green Bank,
W.Va., to re-observe some of the interesting spots in the sky
detected earlier.
Copyright 1997, Newsday Inc.
In Search for Intelligent Life, Did They Get a Wrong Number?.,
12-31-1997, pp A25.
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