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From: HPM@SU-AI@sri-unix.UUCP
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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
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From:  Hans Moravec 

a789  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
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!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
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