SUBJECT: SCANNING SKIES FOR ALIEN LIFE                       FILE: UFO2832


BY MELODY PETERSEN Mercury News 


In an Australian sheep pasture, Santa Clara County researchers are working day 
and night to prepare for the most sweeping search ever for intelligent life 
outside the Earth.

Using the huge Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales and truck filled with 
Silicon Valley computers, the group from Mountain View's SETI Institute will 
begin to listen for cosmic conversation between aliens at 4 p.m. Wednesday, 
California time.

Serious science

Although it may sound like something straight out of a supermarket tabloid -- 
Scientists to Eavesdrop on Aliens! --this is serious stuff, at least 30 years 
in the making. The scientists and technicians take pains not to promise too 
much in their search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which they abbreviate 
as SETI. There are too many unknowns.

But they declare proudly that this search is far more advanced than any to 
date.

"We could have success at any step," said SETI physicist John Dreher, "but 
we're prepared for the long journey. It might take a decade. It might take a 
century."

Even that long wait would be worth it, researchers say, since the earthly 
impacts of overhearing an unearthly discussion would be profound.

Would end a lot of conflict

"It would be a historic event that would galvanize humanity into a more 
cohesive body," said Barney Oliver, a retired Hewlett-Packare vice president 
who has worked with Mountain View's SETI Institute since 1971. "To realize 
we're one of many civilizations would create a bond between us here on Earth 
and end a lot of social conflict."

During the five-month experiment known as Project Phoenix, scientists will use 
the 210-foot-diameter Parkes antenna -- the largest in the southern hemisphere 
-- to eavesdrop on sounds in the vicinities of 200 nearby stars. Because the 
carefully chosen stars are similar to our sun, they are more likely than most 
to have a planet like Earth circling them.

Researchers will listen for signals that intelligent beings may have 
intentionally sent our way, said SETI scientist Seth Shostak, or for signals 
that may have inadvertently escaped from a distant planet much like " the 
sounds of 'I Love Lucy' come off the earth."

28 million radio channels

SETI's high-speed computers, shipped to Australia from Mountain View, will 
analyze some 28 million radio channels at once.

"Unfortunately , ET didn't send us a postcard to tell us where on the radio 
dial we could find him," Shostak said.

To the SETI computers, an artificially produced extraterrestrial signal would 
look much like a lone tree sticking out in a wide field of scrub.

Although searches for cosmic radio signals began 35 years ago, Project Phoenix 
uses equipment that can search 28 million channels -- three times as many as 
the last search -- said SETI President Frank Drake, who carried out the first 
such search in 1960. Plus, scientists can now check out any unusual signal 
immediately. Before scientists gathered sounds and analyzed the data later.

"This experiment is thousands to a million times better in the technical sense 
than previous experiments have been," Shostak said. "Will we hear something 
before the millennium? Yes, I think we will."

Shostak may be one of the more optimistic scientists, but even the National 
Academy of Sciences has praised SETI's approach. Project Phoenix is a smaller 
version of a 10-year NASA program that was abruptly canceled by Congress in 
the fall of 1993 after on senator called it the "great Martian chase." NASA 
had spent $60 million on the search, including $30 million on equipment.

But with $4 million in donations from some of the high-tech industry's most 
powerful players -- including David Packard and William R. Hewlett, founders 
of Hewlett-Packard; Gordon Moore, co-founder and chairman of Intel; and Paul 
Allen, Microsoft's co-founder and owner of the Portland Trail Blazers 
basketball team -- the non-profit SETI Institute was able to upgrade the NASA 
equipment to continue the search.

Researchers plan to complete their 200-star survey at Parkes, a town about 250 
miles west of Sydney, in June. It is not easy duty; Shostak notes that Parkes 
has one of the highest concentrations anywhere of poisonous snakes and 
spiders. After finishing their work there, they will move to radio telescopes 
in the northern hemisphere, where they plan to look at 1,000 stars by the year 
2000.

In their search for unearthly life, the scientists are motivated as much by 
skepticism as optimism. Almost to a person, they do not believe in UFOs.



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