Earth Turns an Ear to the Heavens : Astronomy: In the Mojave Desert and Puerto Rico, radiotelescopes are switched on in the largest search ever for signals from life on other planets.
Powerful radiotelescopes in the Mojave Desert and Puerto Rico turned their antennas on Monday to the largest-ever systematic search of the sky for signals from intelligent civilizations on other planets.
If we listen, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration believes, they might call. At noon, on a date picked to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World, the two-pronged effort began.
At Goldstone, near Barstow, Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Steve Levin typed a command into a computer keyboard, causing a 112-foot-wide antenna dish to swing slowly from the east to the south--setting in motion a random survey of the cosmos.
The antenna first checked to see if signals in the 8500 megahertz frequency were emanating from a sliver of sky in the constellation Opiuphus.
That constellation is home to a star known as GL615.A, the object of simultaneous attention at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The 1,000-foot-wide antenna at Arecibo started a more focused examination of about 1,000 sun-like objects where researchers think planets (perhaps inhabited?) are most likely to be located.
At the Owens Valley Radio Observatory near Bishop, scientists waited to check for confirmation of anything interesting from either observatory.
JPL Project Scientist Samuel Gulkis said the initial data would not be thoroughly analyzed Monday. But he doubted that the first digital information in the computer files would reveal the presence of neighbors.
“We can’t be too careful here,” he said. “There’s a lot of noise coming in from our galaxy that produces false alarms.”
NASA hopes to continue the quest for at least a decade, but the U.S. Congress must approve the project on a year-to-year basis. And some have argued that the money could be better spent elsewhere in these strapped times.
The $13.5-million funding request for the program’s first year was cut to between $10 million and $12 million, said JPL project manager Michael Klein.
Partly to counter claims that the search is too fanciful, NASA recently changed the name of the project from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence to the High Resolution Microwave Survey.
“I think you have to be made of wood not to be interested in this topic,” astronomer Carl Sagan said at the Goldstone kickoff, which drew about 500 people.
For now, the Goldstone random survey will check 2 million channels, covering 40 megahertz, for 16 to 20 hours a week. In April, the survey will move to the Owens Valley for a while to check lower frequencies.
