European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - June 6, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse                                By Howard Benedict associated presso it there beyond Jupiter and Pluto and uranus Are Ine stars. Yellow stars Wie our Sun red dwarfs and White dwarfs ecu Iron stars Bright supergiants there Are 300 billion in our Milky Way Galaxy alone arvo More Are continually being bom. In he observable or Verso there Are More Shan 0 billion other galaxies whose Ilar Vauni we can t begin to imagine. Is it conceivable thai of All these stars our Sun is the Only one nurturing Lite not so Many years ago astronomers believed thai our solar system Wilh its Sun and circling planets might be unique. And that Earth might be atone in harbouring intelligent Lite in Lite last two decades however discoveries in fiems As diverse As Asl Onomy and molecular biology have changed Many minds. Advances in astronomy and physics indicate planets Are not rare by a natural part of the Star formation process and May number in the hundreds of billions in the Milky Way alone. Biological experiments have shown How easy it is to form the organic building blocks of life by passing Ufa Ravioli Ligh or electric discharges through a task containing molecules that composed Earth s Early atmosphere. Radio astronomers have discovered thai organic molecules exist deep in interstellar space and Many scientists now believe life owes even More to the Workings of stars than earlier suspected As a result major efforts Are under Way of determine if there Are technologically advanced civilizations out there. Scientist Are now virtually certain there is no intelligent Hie elsewhere in our solar system based on observations from Earth and from unmanned spacecraft. So the search for extraterrestrial intelligence or set As it is called is looking to those 300 billion other stars in the Milky Way particularly those that might have planetary systems the efforts concentrate on listening for aril scially generated radio signals beamed from afar. They Are technologically Superior to earlier radio searches which were hindered by the inability to study at any Given instant a Large sampling of frequency channels of the most promising portion of the radio spectrum now sophisticated computerized signal processors coupled with radio telescopes allow scientists to search millions of channels simultaneously and distinguish almost instantly Between possible valid messages and background noises the larges Seti project is project Sentinel which uses the 84-Iool-diameter Harvard University radio Telescope in the Countryside 30 Miles Northwest of Boston. It systematically scans the Northern skies at More that Highl million separate radio frequencies. So far the search has not selected anything suspicious but Only a Small fraction o the known frequencies have been examined. Other smaller projects Are under Way at Ohio stale University in Europe the soviet Union and elsewhere but the largest most Complete Seti program yet is gearing up a the National aeronautics and space administration. Under the direction of Nasa s Amos research Center in Mountain View calif., researchers at Ames. Nasa s Jet propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Calif., and Al Stanford University Are building and testing the next generation of signal Analysers and other instruments required for the search. Two of the believers in alien life Are at Ames Bernard m. Oliver thief of the set office Anco Donald l Devincenzi assistant chief of research life sciences division the theory is that life originates As a result of the chemistry and physics that Are going on on our planet says Devinenzi. Our observations beyond our solar system indicate we see similar processes very Sukoly occurring elsewhere. If life resulted Here because of these processes we would postulate that life ought to have originated there As  Hie Nasa project will link a machine called a multichannel spectrum analyser or Mesa to a number of radio telescopes including the 112 and 210-tool diameter antennae of Nasa s deep space network and the 1.000-foot Telescope at Arecibo puerto Rico. Basically a computer the Musca lakes the data from the radio Telescope across tens of millions of channels repetitively to look for a signal anywhere in that frequency Range says Devincenzi. The Nasa program Oliver says exceeds the sum total of All previous searches Ever conducted the kind of thing to Are doing Here eventually is going to involve computation rates on the order of 10 million constructions per second. Ii would be impassible to sift a s cosmic Haystack looking for Lille Needles of Power without powerful computers the program s Tive year research phase in which machines and concepts Are being tested at a Cost of about $1.5 million a year is being extended a year. Devicenzi says the operational search should begin in late 19b9 or 1990, a working prototype of Mesa capable of scanning 74,000 frequency channels is being evaluated at Goldstone in California s Mojave  Devincenzo says the results have been very promising. Radio Waves Are being monitored because scientist have determined the Best listening Post is the microwave Region Between 1,000 and 10,000 Megahertz he says. The Milky Way is a noisy place full of cosmic Static Frorer fast moving particles in interstellar space from pulsars quasars neutrons and oven echoes of Tho original big bang he massive explosion of creation. But the part of the spectrum being probed is relatively quiet and Devincenzi says intelligent extraterrestrials wifi the earn knowledge of radio As earthlings Kraght broadcast on these frequencies if they were trying to communicate. There Are several Good reasons Why aliens might logically choose this Range to communicate. It includes the frequency 1,420 Megahertz Al which radio Waves Are emitted by atoms of Hydrogen the most abundant element in the universe. So Seti searchers have concentrated on what they Call the Waler Hole Tho Region near these Hydrogen emissions Between 1,400 and 1,700 Megahertz. One Edge is the Hydrogen frequency. The other is that emitted by Hydroxyl. Composed of one atom each of Hydrogen and oxygen the products formed when Watt decomposes thus the name water Hole Oliver and Devincenzi Hope galactic species might mingle Here via radio Waves just As animals Convene a water holes on Earlh. The plan will involve two complementary search modes one is an All sky Survey that will search the entire celestial sphere to cover the possibility there a be a Lew civilizations transmitting Strong signals possibly As int Ersle a beacons. The second is a targeted search thai will look for weak signals originating near about boo stars that Are similar to our Sun in age and Luminosity and that Are within 60 Light years 460 trillion Miles of Earth. Oliver says the targeted search would focus on Star that might be surrounded by a system of planets. The stars themselves Are too not to Harbor Fife but could support me on a planet Tike the Sun does for our Earth there Are 20 billion solar Type stars in our  he says if Only half of them have planets you have or the order of 10 billion. On Earth life started very Quirky. And when you consider there Are Many Star systems out there that Are much older than ours you Don t have to sit around for a Miracle of life to happen happens right  Tho first one i d Tike to look at is Alpha Cen Nuri Oliver says. We have nol looked at the nearest Star it us  How would researchers recognize a radio signal emanating from an alien civilization Page 14 the stars and stripes Satui