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Interstellar Communications - A Special Report
The Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico.
This could be a stellar moment for Humankind.
A giant network of 350 radio telescopes are under construction in the vicinity of Hat Creek in Northern California. Thanks
to a very generous donation from Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, in cooperation with the University of California at Berkeley,
the array is being built and will be completed in 2010 and then begin the search for alien signals from as far out as 1,000
light-years, and possibly even further.
The radio telescopes will individually search many different regions of the sky and,
if a signal is suspected from a scanned area, the full array of all of the telescopes can be expected to be combined for much
greater power and clarification, to properly confirm and analyze the discovery.
Also, the gigantic Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico has been upgraded to greatly
increase the signal sensitivity. And there is also that Very Large Array of radio telescopes in New Mexico. And on and on
it goes. In other words, the major search is on.
However, the chances are not considered great for finding signals actually intended
for us or for other intelligent life in our galaxy. The hope is that we might be able to eavesdrop on transmissions that represent
a natural spill-over of normally generated signals in the course of day-to-day communications. It might be expected to be
much as we produce from frequency modulated transmissions and other broadcast emissions generated from our civilization here
on Earth.
Does this mean that we will soon be communicating with aliens from outer space? Not
necessarily so. The chance of our Milky Way Galaxy being greatly populated by legions of chatty extra-terrestrials is considered
to be slim to none.
What a good number of serious scientists do expect is that out of all the many planetary
systems that seem to be out there, a few may have one or more habitable planets that have actually developed some form of
life. And, out of those few, a tiny fraction may have actually advanced to the point of developing civilizations and transmitting
communication systems.
It is not unlike searching for a few very tiny needles in an extremely large haystack.
And we must also realize that, if such a needle is eventually found, it will be a signal that started its long trip through
interstellar space, and eventually to us, many, many, many centuries ago. In other words, it will most certainly be a long
wait between transmissions if we should decide to attempt a reply.
But we are not to be deterred. We want to be absolutely certain that
we are not alone. And with these very special radio telescopes and with various new orbital scopes that can locate Earth-like
planets and with all sorts of new computerized analytical equipment — with all of this now and in our near
future, we may, before the end of this new century, find that we are definitely not alone.
I would ask but one question. Are you ready for this?
-- T.D.N.
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Extraterrestrial Update
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Michael Woods, of the "Block News Alliance" reports on the, "Leading authorities on the
search for extraterrestrial intelligence at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California."
The conclusions by these authorities is that they believe there is a good chance
that the very first intelligent signals from "out there" may be received by the year 2025. They also feel there is a strong
possibility that it may be anything from communication traffic leaked into outer space to transmissions from an intelligent
machine.
Mr. Woods also quotes H. Paul Shuch, executive director of the SETI
League, Inc., who says, "There are as many stars in the universe as there are grains of sand on Earth’s beaches.
About 10 percent may have planets with intelligent life."
However, not everyone agrees with these figures. The director of "Astrophysics Group
- West" (Tal D. Noble) notes that, "Our latest deep space observations indicate a much larger number of suns than grains of
sand on Earth and our growing understanding of extra-planetary systems suggests the possibility of a far smaller percentage
of such systems actually harboring intelligent life.
"If this should prove to be the case, we then may have a very tiny percentage of
systems with advanced life forms, and at the same time, a much larger number of suns from which to draw such percentages.
So, this can still represent a considerable number of extraterrestrial civilizations."
Mr. Noble also suggests that there is a good reason why we have not
been inundated with intelligent electromagnetic signals from outer space. Such signals, he notes, "...travel at the speed
of light (approx. 186 thousand miles a second), and since the stars are often hundreds and mostly many thousands (and millions)
of light-years from our system, such transmissions must take a very long time getting here or anywhere else." (Notation: A
"light-year" is the distance light travels in one year — approx. 6 with 12 zeros after it, in numbers of miles.)
Mr. Noble also notes that, "This is not to suggest that we won’t
eventually receive such signals. It means that we may need more patience. Don’t expect it to happen soon. (Unless you’re
convinced we are already being visited by alien tourists interested in seeing these quaint and primitive Earthlings. But,
that’s a very different bag of space barnacles.)"
Meanwhile, there is always the SciFi channel.
Wire service input contributed to the development of this special report.
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