SCIENTIST STEPS UP 20 YEAR SEARCH FOR CALL FROM ET

June 9th, 1996 / July 6, 1996
Source: Electronic Times
AN AMERICAN scientist is convinced man will communicate with aliens within 10 to 20 years after the world's most ambitious project to locate and contact extraterrestrials is switched on in August, writes Sean Hargrave.

Astronomers have been searching for signs of alien radio signals for 30 years, but have yet to detect a confirmed broadcast. They believe by improving our search capabilities this summer, the chances of discovering life will be significantly increased.

Researchers hope to chance upon the alien equivalent of leaked television and radio shows or cellular phone calls.

Such broadcasts travel across space relatively intact at near-light speed. A radio show, for example, takes less than 10 minutes to reach the sun and reaches the edge of our solar system in about an hour. The first television shows are estimated to be currently some 50 light years from Earth.

Despite not having even a hint of an alien signal from the 150 trillion radio waves studied so far, Dan Werthimer, a space scientist from the University of California, at Berkeley, remains optimistic.

He will this August begin the fourth stage of his 20-year Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations (Serendip) project by turning on a new piece of equipment. This scanner will allow his team to analyse 160m radio channels per second, instead of the current limit of 20m.

The fourth stage of his project uses the world's largest telescope, the 1,000ft-wide Arecibo in Puerto Rico, making it the most advanced and comprehensive search yet for extraterrestrial life.

Werthimer's team is now scanning frequencies similar to those used by mobile phones because these microwave signals are sturdy enough to survive a lengthy voyage across space.

However, for this there is a price to pay. It means the team is looking at about only 1% of the radio spectrum that signals could possibly come in on. The search is also limited by the Arecibo telescope being able to see only one third of the sky.

Werthimer is quick to point out to any who pour scorn on his personal 20-year search for extraterrestrial life, that the universe is so large it is not statistically surprising it is taking time to locate a signal.

"The absence of evidence is not proof there is no other intelligent life in the universe," he says. "Our telescopes could easily be unfortunate enough to be looking at the wrong piece of space at the wrong time."

However, Werthimer does concede that there are serious problems with expecting aliens to be like ourselves, communicating via radio signals.

"If you asked me a couple of hundred years ago how to make contact with aliens I'd have probably recommended sending smoke signals," he says. "It is possible that intelligent life forms are using systems far more complex than we have discovered and so we're unable to pick them up."

His team also concedes that civilisations far more advanced than our own could well have an agreed policy of not shocking developing cultures by blinding them with science millennia more advanced than humble radio transmitters.

Even if they did decide to send us a few television shows of their own, Werthimer again concedes we would be unlikely to decode the signal or make any sense of the message.

Despite these drawbacks - which were behind Nasa's decision to withdraw funding from the project several years ago - Werthimer believes his =A350,000 annual research budget, which is mainly funded by charitable donations, will bring results within the next two (interupt)...

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