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PARASETI ET CONTACT VIA SUBTLE ENERGIES Have signals from intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe passed us by because our technology is not designed to detect a range of more subtle energy frequencies? re we alone in the Universe? This is probably one of the most important ques- tions to be answered, yet modern science seems reluctant to address it. It is almost certain that life does exist in some other part of the Universe; it is just a question of how far away and how evolved it is, never mind its state of techno- logical development. What would really hit home would be tangible evidence of an extraterrestrial intelligence that was as technologically developed as ourselves, perhaps more so, if only to just say "Hi out there!" Face-to-face contact would not be necessary; just to know we are not alone would be enough. With this in mind, NASA started a program that was directed towards scanning the eternal cosmos for intelligent life, hoping to find a signal from a civilisation as technologically developed as our own. This project was named SETI: the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. For a while, it seemed that both the US government and the scientific community were ready to embrace a greater truth; however, this soon proved not to be the case. After many years of initial research and planning, the real search for extraterrestrial intelligence began in 1991; a year later, Congress ordered a termination of all funding. THE BEGINNINGS OF SETI SETI began in 1959 with the publication of an article in the journal Nature. Two Cornell physicists, Giuseppi Cocconi and Philip Morrison, suggested a project in which the presence of extraterrestrial life could be detected with radiotelescopes tuned into the microwave band (3-30 GHz). However, such an endeavour was already being planned by a young astronomer, the now famous Frank Drake, who in the spring of 1960 scanned sun-like stars for signs of ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) with an 85-foot dish in West Virginia. Drake hypothesised that a more advanced ETI somewhere out there would be transmitting a signal to catch our (or anyone else's) attention. If so, then they would use one particular frequency of significance. Drake thought that 21 cm (1.4 MHz), the neutral band of hydrogen, would be it. After scanning for some time on this frequency, the young astronomer found nothing, and so ended what he called Project Ozma. The first government-funded SETI-type project was not in America but in Soviet Russia. During the 1960s, the Russians set up omnidirectional antenna stations to listen in on the heavens in search of signals that might be of intelligent origin. While Drake used a highly directional antenna system, the Russian system would pick up radio emissions from all directions. This strategy meant that if a signal were found, it would be difficult to determine from which direction it originated. On the other hand, the Russian astronomers would never make the mistake of looking in the wrong direction! It was not until the beginning of the 1970s that the United States government gave any serious thought to searching the Universe for radio signals of ETI origin. The first move was made at NASA's Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California, where several projects were set up to study the technical considerations involved. A team of outside experts was assembled—including Bernard Oliver, who was on leave from the Hewlett Packard Corporation—to produce a detailed report, known as Project Cyclops. By the late 1970s, NASA's Ames Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, were engaged in projects studying the technical aspects of any SETI-type endeavour. Ames concentrated on examining 1,000 sun-like stars for intelli- gent life, much like Drake's original Project Ozma, in what was known as "targeted search" using sensitive equipment to detect weak or sporadic signals. Meanwhile, JPL was concerned with systematic sweeps in all directions in a complete sky survey. by Gavin Dingley © 2000 Sunningdale Manningford Bruce Near Pewsey, Wiltshire SN9 6JL United Kingdom Telephone: +44 (0)1672 562808 E-mail: gavin.dingley@astra.ukf.net NEXUS - 43 by Gavin Dingley © 2000 DECEMBER 2000 — JANUARY 2001