S.D. Astronomer Is Waiting for Message : Search: Fleet Space Theater and Science Center astronomer makes film about the search for intelligent life in the universe.
Three years from now, you’ve got your feet up as you watch a favorite television show and an announcer breaks in with a special news bulletin from NASA headquarters in Washington.
“In what is being hailed as the greatest scientific discovery of all time, NASA researchers have announced the detection of intelligent life in the universe,” the announcer says.
Astronomer Dennis Mammana of San Diego can readily foresee this scenario being played out in homes across the nation.
NASA on Monday launched its latest--and somewhat controversial--program: the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), a decade-long program that will use giant radiotelescopes to try to detect signals accidentally or deliberately beamed our way.
“I can’t imagine anybody not looking at the stars and wondering if there is somebody out there,” said Mammana, resident astronomer of the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center. “We are gregarious creatures; we don’t want to be alone. Deep in our hearts, we need to find others or to know if we are alone.”
Mammana is a believer. He is confident that one day, humans will know the answer to a question that’s been asked for centuries: Is there life in space?
“If they are broadcasting when we are listening, SETI will find them,” he said. “My guess is within three years, we’ll have candidate signals.”
For several decades, our culture has been steeped in subtle and not-so-subtle curiosity about extraterrestrials, embodied in television shows such as “Lost in Space,” “My Favorite Martian,” “Star Trek,” and the “Star Wars” movies, to mention only a few. The tabloids have always run amazing tales about alien creatures from other worlds.
To help San Diegans sort out the science from the fiction, Mammana has written and directed a 44-minute planetarium show, narrated by Nichelle Nichols, better known as Lt. Uhura on “Star Trek.” The show, “Are We Alone?” is scheduled to open Friday.
During the past three decades, more than five dozen searches for extraterrestrials have been launched--all unsuccessful. This one, costing $10 million a year and possibly lasting a decade, is the nation’s most ambitious effort.
From the Mojave Desert, NASA will use its Deep Space Tracking Station to scan the Northern Hemisphere sky. Similar efforts will also occur in Australia and Puerto Rico. Scientists will tune in to every radio signal, from one to 10 gigahertz, looking at millions of frequencies. Even if they did find a signal that appeared to indicate a life form, a simple hello may take 30 to 40 years.
“Literally, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, one radio frequency out of hundreds of millions,” Mammana said.
Mammana believes there may well be extraterrestrial beings because the recipe for life--carbon, oxygen, water--a sun, and a planet exist elsewhere in the universe.
“It’s just a matter of finding the smoking gun,” he said. “To me it always seemed obvious, ever since I was a little kid looking at the stars, that if we exist, others must exist.”
In fact, Mammana is so convinced that NASA’s latest search will be fruitful that he has begun contemplating the next set of questions: “What is important enough to tell them? What do we want to tell them about us ?”
