The Following article was published by National Geographic News November 14^th, 2003

Earthlings could make contact with extraterrestrial beings by the year 2025, two astronomers predict in a new book.  The authors say it's unlikely space aliens look like Hollywood's ET—little, green, and hairless—and that while aliens are highly unlikely to pay Earth a visit, they may be sending radio signals across space to let us know they exist.

The book, Cosmic Company, "is an explication of why we think they're out there, how we're looking for them, what they must be like, and a little bit of what it might mean" to find life on other planets, said co-author Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) in Mountain View, California.

The institute conducts research in astronomy, the planetary sciences, and evolution. Past research projects have been funded by NASA, the National Science Foundation, and numerous universities and foundations.

Beyond Our Galaxy

Shostak and co-author Alexandra Barnett, an astronomer and executive director of the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, California, base their predictions on a number of factors.

They include the billions of years in which extraterrestrial life could have evolved and the abundance of planets and stars elsewhere in the universe that are likely to mimic environmental conditions found on Earth.

"It's a matter of statistics, really," said Barnett. "Depending on who you talk to, the universe is 12 to 15 billion years old. Humans have only been around for 40,000 years. We really are the new kids on the block. It would just be too tough a pill to swallow to believe that nothing else has evolved in all that time and space."

The universe is indeed vast. In 1924 astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that there are galaxies beyond our own. "More than a half century later, the Hubble telescope has shown that there are at least 100 billion such galaxies," said Shostak. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is home to at least 100 billion stars.

Planets are also plentiful. Since 1995, when the first Jupiter-sized planet outside of our solar system was found, astronomers have been able to identify about 100 more planets, all of them around 300 times more massive than Earth.

"Planets really are as common as phone poles," said Shostak. "Right now, we know that there are planets out there [orbiting] ten or twenty percent of the stars we look at. So far, only huge planets have been found, but it would be a big surprise if there were only big ones. I don't think anyone expects that to be the case."

Until now, the search for intelligent life has been somewhat hampered by inadequate technology—too few stars surveyed at too low a sensitivity by Earth and space-based telescopes.

But in 2007, NASA will launch the Kepler Mission, a satellite probe able to detect smaller planets the size of Mercury, Mars, or the Earth. The mission is specifically designed to look for planets in what scientists consider the habitable zone: the distance from a star where liquid water can exist on the planet's surface.

Projects like the Kepler Mission and the new Allen Telescope Array, located near Mount Lassen, California, which will enable astronomers to survey 100,000 stars by 2015, should increase the odds of finding a radio signal broadcast by alien life, say the astronomers.

"The bottom line is that there is an enormous amount of real estate, and there doesn't seem to be anything particularly special about our neighborhood. The star that's our sun is nothing special. The Earth is just a rock," said Shostak. "To think anything else is to once again put ourselves at the center of the universe, and scientists are very [wary] of doing that. We've done it before and been proven wrong."

Searching for Intelligent Life

The building blocks of life on Earth—complex organic compounds and amino acids—are abundant in the universe and can be found in meteorites, comets, and interstellar gas and dust.

"There's a growing realization that there may be some other biology in our solar system," said Shostak. "There are deep oceans on the moons of Jupiter, and some evidence that Mars in its early days really should have had some life. So if there are two or maybe even three instances in this solar system alone, where life could have emerged, it's not unreasonable to consider that similar situations arose in other solar systems."

Of course, there is a difference between life and intelligent life, and scientists disagree about the likelihood of intelligence evolving on another planet.

Some believe that it takes very special conditions for intelligence to evolve. The late Stephen Jay Gould, the preeminent Harvard University evolutionary biologist and paleontologist, wrote that the creation of intelligence was a freak occurrence, requiring a number of specific events to occur that could never be replicated again.

Shostak and Barnett believe differently. They argue that there are evolutionary mechanisms that encourage intelligence, particularly among social beings.

"For instance, if you can intuit the actions of the males next to you—they're about to steal your food or your mate, say—then you're going to have increased breeding success, so the next generation is going to have more ability to live in a social environment," said Shostak. "This is very general behavior—it's not miraculous—you see it in the great apes, of course, but you also see it in dolphins, whales."

"JO Alien"

As to what an intelligent alien life-form might look like should such a thing exist, it's anyone's guess. Shostak and Barnett created "JO Alien," an animated character for a planetarium show at the National Space Centre in Leicester, England, to explore the question.

"It's the poster child of aliens," said Shostak. "A very conventional kind of alien—grey and smooth and humanoid—very anthropomorphic. Not what we really expect."

However, the genderless JO does demonstrate some of the basic principles of physics and engineering that might dictate what another life-form might look like.

"An alien would probably have to be bigger than a rat because rats have quite small brains, and an intelligent life-form would need a bigger brain," said Barnett. "So bigger than a cat, but not bigger than an elephant because there are limitations on how much weight a body can support."

JO Alien has two eyes, based on the assumption that an alien life-form would be found on a planet circling a star. Everything on Earth that lives in light has developed eyes. Why two instead of one? Two gives you the evolutionary advantage of being better able to catch your next meal, said Barnett. Why not ten eyes? It would take an enormous amount of brain-power to process all the signals, she said, with little or no extra benefit.

As far as limbs are concerned, the pair speculate that an extraterrestrial would have more than one, particularly if it's building radio telescopes, but a score would be a stretch. Again, it would require a great deal of brain-power to coordinate all 20, Barnett said.

Given the enormous distances between the stars, measured in terms of trillions of miles, Shostak doesn't expect a visit.

"There's a tremendous amount of interest in alien life, mostly from the point of view that we've been visited," he said. "I don't believe that, and I don't think most scientists do. What we'd most like to convey is that there's a possibility they exist even if they haven't visited, and we're searching for them."

 In the course of my work, I have the opportunity to travel from time to time. Recently, I chanced to meet a person who had a bunch of memorabilia from the Hubble space telescope project.

The nature of the things he had on display indicated that he had worked on that project for awhile, so I asked him about it. He told me what his role had been, and then discussed the impending closure of the project and whether the announcement was more a political strategy to get more funding from Congress rather than a reflection of any reality.

I then told him that I'd written my dissertation on UFOs and the UFO community (one of his eyebrows went up at this point), and said that those folks kept their fingers on the pulse of programs like the Hubble, because they were very interested in our (overt, anyway) space exploration programs.

He _then_ told me that before he'd worked on the Hubble, he had been at another well-known place of employment (which I shan't mention here so as to make it difficult for people to track him down by looking for his work history, should there be moles among us).

While there, he came in contact with people working on different "top, top, top secret" projects, the nature of which he could only surmise given the kind of contact he had with them. One day he was talking to one of those people and this person said, "I'll just tell you this: There's something out there." And this person pointed upward as he said it.

At this point I emphasized that when it comes to UFOs, we have too many high-quality sightings, with multiple independent witnesses and simultaneous instrumented data, to believe that nothing is going on. And I said that one has to admit that there's a lot of foolishness that attaches itself to the subject of UFOs, and a lot of religious or quasi-religious, perhaps wishful, thinking that gets wrapped up with it, but there is, nevertheless, that hard core of evidence to consider. He said yes, reliable evidence.

But, I pointed out, in relation to his contact's statement, the question is, "It's one thing to say there's something out there. It's another, entirely, to suggest that what is out there, has come here." He agreed. He said that based on his knowledge of this person's project (the basis for which he described in one or two words), he thought it was probably something like the SETI project. Then he made a joke about losing his job because of telling me this. My immediate thought, which I kept to myself, was that SETI is about listening, and what he had described could also be used for broadcasting/transmitting, or for tracking something, or.....

Several years ago, when a friend found out that I was working on a UFO-related dissertation, she said that her friend's husband had been working for several years as part of a team under a government contract to figure out how we would communicate with an alien race.

Makes you wonder if SETI is a front organization, and real contact has already been made. When the Powers That Be decide to let the cat officially out of the bag, will SETI be the "front man" for doing so?

It also makes you wonder how much of the cat we actually have _in_ the bag, and whether there may not be different parts of the cat contained in different bags - the holders of any one bag-with-parts being unknown to those who hold still other parts and all thinking (mistakenly) that they themselves have the only, the full, and the complete cat.

If it should appear to be fiscally or politically necessary for one bag-holder to let their part of the cat out (which they may erroneously believe is the whole cat), could it precipitate, in self-defense as public opinion creates a groundswell of support for massive funding for that bag-opening group, a chain reaction of bag openings?

Or, perhaps some of the bag-holders have a sketchy awareness that other folks elsewhere in the political/military/research complex seem to have bags with something in them. In the battle for financial and other resources to continue their work, they want to know who their competitors are for the resources, so they snoop. One good way to snoop is to keep your ear tuned to the UFO community, where tidbits of info from insiders (or former insiders) periodically surfaces. Like the conversation I've just related to you all.

I realize that this all falls under the category of "yet another unofficial tidbit about alien life" that cannot be verified... all the more so because I am withholding details about this person that might enable him to be identified by someone who really wanted to track him down. But I guess I see it as kind of like throwing another bean into the pot. By itself, not very nourishing. But when we put _all_ the beans into the pot together, an interesting stew seems to present itself for our consideration.

So, for what it's worth, there it is. My bean for the day. (Ha! In this case, it's a human bean! - Pah-dump-DUMP!)

 Brenda

The following article was published in “The Daily Mississippian”, 27^th February, 2004

Renowned scientist Jill Tarter [ left ]spoke Tuesday at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, detailing her role in the search for extraterrestrial life. Tarter, director of the once-defunct Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program, described the process in combing through the expanding universe, exploring the possibility of intelligent life.

"When we ask ourselves are we the only one in the universe, we're asking, 'Are there any other intelligent...life in the universe that wonder if they are alone.'"

The SETI program, which was featured in the 1997 movie "Contact," written by famed astronomer Carl Sagan, utilizes what Tarter called "primitive technology" to search for life.

"We are the youngest technology out there," Tarter said, explaining that if she and her team of scientist make contact, the signal sent by the extraterrestrial life would be far more superior.

However, to begin her search for the life, Tarter said, she and her scientists use radio telescopes to find signals emitted by light, starts and planetary objects.

"The signal from the stars are very, very faint," Tarter said. "If you take a single cell phone (transmitter) and put the transmitter on the moon, it is the second strongest signal in the sky."

With the SETI program, Tarter began searching for the faint signals in 1975 after she received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, and when NASA terminated the program in 1993, Tarter had to find another resource to continue her love.

"We are rising from the ashes of congressional termination," Tarter said.

Tarter and her colleagues created the privately funded Project Phoenix, a project that uses the largest radio telescope in the world in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, with another in England to search for signals simultaneously.

"We haven't yet detected a signal, but we really haven't done a lot of searching."

With Project Phoenix, the telescopes can only comb through about one million stars, around 0.001 percent of the Milky Way Galaxy, Tarter said.

In 2007, Tarter said scientists are planning to build the Allen Telespan Array, a group of more than 300 radio telescopes in California, to expand in their search for signals.

"It will be 300 times faster than today in 2007."

After Tarter and her team of scientists find a signal, she said they will try to deduce from the information the composition of the planet's atmosphere. If water, ozone and methane are present in the atmosphere, like Earth, scientist believe life also may be existent, Tarter said.

The lecture was sponsored by the UM National Remote Sensing and Space Law Center, the Sarah Isom Center for Women and the Mississippi Space Grant Program.

Although Tarter has yet to find any life, she still remains an eternal optimist.

"I've worked hard in this project, and that's no reason at all to be (discouraged), because it's a huge universe out there."

Paul Allen, the co-founder of software titan Microsoft, is ploughing a slice of his fortune into the search for life on other planets. Mr Allen is donating $13.5m to the California-based Seti Institute.

The money will be used to create a radio telescope array comprising more than 200 dishes which will measure signals from space.

"It will expand our understanding of how the Universe was formed," says Mr Allen, a keen fan of science fiction.

Space exploration has seen renewed interest recently with the Nasa Mars rovers and President George W Bush's outline plans for an ambitious space initiative.

 [left]Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, promoting the search for alien life.

A world of riches

Funding the search for ET is a drop in the ocean for Mr Allen, whose estimated worth is $36bn. It was Mr Allen who persuaded Bill Gates to drop out of Harvard and join him in creating Microsoft in 1975. He then quit full-time at Microsoft in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease.

But that hasn't stunted his mental and entrepreneurial capacity. His venture capital firm, Vulcan Ventures, has been one of the biggest funders of the internet age.

And Mr Allen has his own ever-growing list of internet and entertainment based start-ups, comprising stakes in more than 140 firms.