SETI RESEARCHERS FIND... TV DINNER

Internet UFO Group Media Archive

From:Internet UFO Group
Title:SETI RESEARCHERS FIND... TV DINNER
Source:Electronic Telegraph
Date:January 18, 1996


By Robert Uhlig, Technology Correspondent

After spending a year scouring 200 solar systems for signs of

extra-terrestrial beings, astronomers have found indisputable proof of

intelligent life -- in the kitchen below their telescope.

For four months last year Peter Backus, of Project Phoenix in California,

believed that he was listening to messages from outer space via the 64-metre

Parkes radio telescope in Australia.

The telescope, the biggest in the southern hemisphere, picked up a

distinctive but inexplicable radio signal around 2.4 gigahertz at about the

same time each evening that could not be explained.

However, a thorough investigation revealed that the scientists were not

listening to little green men whispering through space. Instead, they were

eavesdropping on frozen dinners cooking in the microwave oven downstairs.

"It was pretty loud," Dr. Backus told the annual meeting of the American

Astronomical Society in San Antonio [last] week. "One time I tracked one

signal for two hours. I couldn't rule it out as human noise," he said.

Dr. Backus said that a note had since been stuck to the microwave asking

staff not to use it while the telescope is operating.

Project Phoenix researchers used a new automated system to sift human noise

from alien signals, but still encountered several false alarms.

Many of the most promising signals were from satellites.

Another hopeful electromagnetic buzz came from the farthest possible source

of human noise: the transmitter on the Pioneer 10 space probe, six billion

miles from Earth.