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ARTICLE / OKLAHOMA MUFON
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NASA'S SEARCH FOR ALIEN LIFE ABOUT TO BEGIN
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Provided by: Oklahoma Mufonews Newsletter January 1992


Green Valley, W.VA. - It could be a crucial moment in human history,
the start of a new age of exploration that leads to discoveries
eclipsing those of Christopher Columbus. Or it may be an interstellar
wild goose chase.

Next Columbus Day, after almost two decades of skepticism and debate,
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to launch a
seven-year, $100 million effort to scan the heavens for the equivalent
of two little words: "Greetings Earthlings"

The program, called the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence,
will be humankind's most ambitious effort so far to pick up radio
signals from beings outside out solar system.

"It would probably be the biggest advance since the birth of
language," said astronomer Eric J. Chaisson, senior scientist at
Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute, who sat on the panel
that helped plan the search.

For the first few years, all SETI work will involve borrowing radio
telescopes normally used for astronomy or satellite tracking.

But in 1995, when a huge new radio telescope is completed at the
National Radio Astronomy Observatory here, SETI astronomers will get
the full-time use of the observatory's current workhouse-a 140-foot
wide, white steel dish that looms above the farmland in this isolated
Appalachian valley.

Observatory Director George Seielstad, who navigates a battleship-
gray diesel sedan (the spark plugs in gasoline-powered engines cause
radio noise) around the observatory grounds, is typical of many
astronomers in that he has come to suspect that life probably has
developed on planets orbiting other stars.

And on some of those planets, he thinks, intelligent life probably
has built technological societies.

But the odds against finding those civilizations, he figures, are -
well, astronomical.

Even if extraterrestrial civilizations pepper the starry night,
scientists speculate they may not want to advertise themselves. Or they
might be too advanced, or not advanced enough to use radio signals.

Or their signals may be drowned out by the rising babble of earthly
radio transmissions, especially those produced by the world's military
forces and the growing number of global communications satellites.

Or those cultures may simply be scattered too thinly in what
scientists call the "cosmic haystack" - the universe's billions of
galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars.

Chaisson, a former member of the panel of astronomers that planned
the SETI project, compared the task to sifting the sands of the
Atlantic beaches by hand in search of a single small diamond.

Still, many scientists support the hunt.

"The reward is so enormous." Seielstad said, "It's such a significant
discovery that you have to find out. As humans, our intellectual
curiosity sort of demands we find out if this is true."

"At least this set of measurements will let us know something," he
says. "You're trying. You're not just speculating. It's not just asking
how many angels can dance on the head of a pin."

"Anybody who thinks they know the chances of success is a fool," said
astronomer Frank D. Drake, who has estimated that there may be a few
thousand extraterrestrial civilizations scattered among the Milky Way's
400 billion stars. "But my guess is we have a real chance of succeeding
by the turn of the century."

Others think it will take much longer. In 1985, one astronomer at a
SETI conference offered the "fairly optimistic" assessment that a
successful search might take 5,000 years.


Scott,
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