Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!HPM@SU-AI From: HPM@SU-AI@sri-unix.UUCP Newsgroups: net.space Subject: none Message-ID: <3176@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Sun, 17-Jul-83 22:28:00 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.3176 Posted: Sun Jul 17 22:28:00 1983 Date-Received: Mon, 18-Jul-83 19:36:28 EDT Lines: 128 From: Hans Moraveca789 2214 16 Jul 83 BC-APN--Extraterrestrial Life, Adv July 31-2 takes,500-980 $adv 31 AGENCIES AND RADIO OUT For release Sun., July 31 >From AP Newsfeatures APN PRINT SUBSCRIBERS HAVE BEEN MAILED ONE ILLUSTRATION EDITOR'S NOTE - Is there a real E.T. out there? If there is, Frank Drake will find it. The Cornell astronomer is known as the father of SETI - the search for extraterrestrial life. By MEL REISNER Associated Press Writer ITHACA, N.Y. (AP) - After a multimillion-channel system of radio telescopes begins to monitor interstellar signals around the end of the decade, astronomer Frank Drake figures on another 10 years or so before ankind makes contact with life in space. That's not to say that he believes human life as we know it will be seen on other planets by 2001. ''It is unlikely that the end product of a long evolution would be a duplication of us,'' he says. ''We just know that it will be intelligent enough to communicate. You get the sense that there's a lot of life out there. It will be fascinating when we learn about it.'' Drake, 52, is known as the father of the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI) because of his interest and work on the subject for nearly three decades. He helped organize the first SETI conference in 1961. Twice, as a young researcher, Drake was disappointed when he found that what appeared to be signals emanating in space turned out to be sounds apparently from a passing airplane or truck. Undaunted, he developed an equation to calculate the number of possible communication-capable civilizations in space. The 22-year-old equation, which Drake wrote while preparing the agenda for the first SETI conference, is widely known, especially since its use in James Michener's novel ''Space.'' SETI is just one of the pursuits of Drake, who teams with Carl Sagan of television's ''Cosmos'' to give Cornell perhaps the best-known astronomy department in the nation. Drake is believed to be the first to send a coded radio message to the stars. He also discovered Jupiter's radiation belts, worked on the Mariner series of Mars explorations and has been studying the measured, steady emissions of energy - pulsars - from neutron stars. The radio telescope, first set up in the 1950s, is the instrument that gave scientists visions of getting in touch with extraterrestrials. Cornell was the right place at the right time for Drake after it completed the world's largest radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, in 1963. Featuring the trademark aluminum dish mounted upside-down to intercept radio waves, the 1,000-foot-diameter Arecibo instrument is capable of picking up, filtering and delivering to a computer signals from incredible distances. Renovations will make it 2,000 times as sensitive as before. The development is what makes Drake confident of contacting life in space before the turn of the century. Three decades ago, he says, the first radio listened for waves on one channel; next year, the Planetary Society-Harvard project will begin receiving on 128,000 channels at once. MORE ap-ny-07-17 0116EDT *************** !a790 2224 16 Jul 83 BC-APN--Extraterrestrial Life, Adv 31-1st add,550 $adv 31 AGENCIES AND RADIO OUT For release Sun., July 31 ITHACA, N.Y.: at once. According to Drake, that should vastly increase the chances of contact, but the tool he thinks will make the breakthrough is a cluster of telescopes midway through a 10-year National Aeronautics and Space Administration program which will have eight million channels. ''It takes a system that powerful to give us a chance of succeeding by the end of the century,'' he says. ''We have to have a device that tests many, many possibilities at once. You're getting data from eight million channels a second. By the end of the next five years, we'll have the computer techniques to deal with the enormous data flow from a system of that size.'' In years to come, Drake would like to see the whole concept lifted from the earth to an orbiting radio telescope which would beam its information back to earth-based computers. The setup would narrow the possibility of false alarms like the kind he experienced in 1958 while a graduate student at Harvard. Drake recalls picking up ''a great big signal in a narrow frequency channel'' and believing that he was monitoring a message from space. However, the signal which appeared to be coming from the Pleiades star cluster persisted even when the telescope was moved - an indication that it came from an earthly source. Two years later, Drake had to rule out another potential contact because it, too, was multidirectional. ''No one has ever seen a signal which strong evidence showed was extraterrestrial. There are some in the files (on tape) which couldn't be tested,'' Drake acknowledges. No one ever will receive such a signal, says physicist Frank J. Tipler of Tulane University. Tipler, a leading critic of SETI, argues that radio telescopy is speculative and lacks the scientifically mandatory possibility that it could be proven false. Its proponents have never said what test results would satisfy them that other life does not exist, he says. Tipler wrote in Discover magazine, ''I contend that any discussion of extraterrestrial intelligence contains tacit speculations about civilizations that have possessed radio technology for thousands or millions of years. Radio searchers presume that civilizations have been deliberately beaming signals at us for this length of time.'' Drake says Tipler's arguments can be countered, but that such doubts in a field where major discoveries are still theoretical hurt SETI campaigners seeking funds to back their explorations. The orbiting radio telescope he envisions would cost $20 billion, putting it out of reach of private foundations without a massive infusion of government help. This year, the government dedicated $200 million of the NASA budget to SETI. Actual contact with extraterrestrials would multiply the amount of money for more research, Drake acknowledges. Drake is not put off by the fact that he would not be around to make friends with communicants from space. Radio waves travel at the speed of light - 186,000 miles per second - which means that a transmission from the nearest star would have to travel more than four years to reach earth. Pointing out that television waves travel at the same speed, he says, ''If you can intercept their TV, you can learn what you want to know without asking questions.'' END ADV ap-ny-07-17 0127EDT ***************