SETI director looks outside Earth

Dr. Jill Tarter has not only questioned whether life exists beyond our earth, but she has literally gone in search of the answer. She shared her experiences, strategies and the future of what she calls a multigeneration project in a crowded Whittenberger Auditorium Tuesday.\nDr. Tarter is the director and the Bernard M. Oliver chair of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, Calif. \nThe SETI research strategy is to use radio signals, radio telescopes and optical telescopes to listen and look for signals -- microwave radio frequency and optical wave length frequency -- that may be transmitted from other planets. Tarter said she hopes to one day pick up signals that will be a manifestation of technologies on other planets. \n"We look, and we listen," she said. "We use ourselves as an example as to what technologies to look for."\nTarter works on Project Phoenix, a comprehensive search for extraterrestrial technology and a continuation of NASA's high-resolution microwave survey terminated in 1993. \n"It's called Project Phoenix because it is rising from the ashes of congressional termination," she told the audience, which responded with a loud roar of laughter.\nPhoenix is a targeted search of 1,000 stars near Earth. Tarter said they concentrated the search on the low end of the microwave window in the sky because at higher frequency, the water vapor and oxygen in the earth's atmosphere creates background noise that could interfere with potential extraterrestrial signals. SETI looks for patterns in frequency and time in these signals. \n"The real question about looking for intelligent life elsewhere is to ask ourselves how many planets are out there," Tarter said. "Perhaps there's life as we don't yet know it that doesn't need a planet, but life as we do know it does require a planet, so planets are important." \nTarter said there is evidence of 120 planets circling in orbit around 105 stars nearby but, to date, there is none exactly like our own. She also said within the next decade, we should begin to learn something about other planets like Earth.\nTarter said both NASA and the European Space Agency have aggressive solar system exploration programs planned for the next couple of decades that will look for life elsewhere within our own planetary system. For now, she said they will keep exploring Mars and following up on the evidence of water on that planet. \n"We will continue to go back to Mars," Tarter said. "We will eventually bring a piece of Mars back to Earth. We will be looking for evidence of fossil life. We'll actually try to get beneath the surface to look for some liquid aquifer that may still be there."\nSETI is working in conjunction with the University of California at Berkley to build a powerful 350-dish telescope called the Allen Telescope Array. The group is hoping the project will be operating by 2007 in northern California. \n"This is not your mother's radio telescope," quipped Tarter. \nThe reaction to the presentation was positive. Nick Mostek, an IU graduate student studying astronomy, said the presentation was great. \n"She explained a lot about the universe at a level that everybody could understand," he said.\nRishi Verma, a freshman who attended a discussion luncheon with Tarter earlier in the week, said meeting her was a good experience. \n"She's a bright woman and an inspirational figure," he said. \nSince 1995, when SETI started observations, millions of signals have been received, but nothing conclusive. Tarter, though, is not deterred by this. \n"The probability of success is difficult to estimate, but if you never search, the chance of success is zero," she said quoting from Giuseppe Coccon and Philip Morrison's Cosmic Search. "Stay tuned! We're gonna keep searching."\n-- Contact staff writer Ruby Thomas at ruathoma@indiana.edu