Clock Ticks for ET's Call

Within the next two dozen years, astronomers running the California-based SETI Institute looking for little green men, women, and any other being, gendered or otherwise, anyone beyond Earth who has figured out how to build and operate a radio transmitter -- say they will finish their quest.

They’re hopeful it will end with unequivocal proof of a radio signal that bears some sort of resemblance to I Love Lucy, or whatever favored accoutrement adorns an alien broadcast. But if there is still no word from ET by then, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence popularized by Carl Sagan’s 1985 sci-fi novel Contact, then the folks at the SETI Institute, who have been patiently working for the past three decades or so, will concede defeat: Either we are alone in the universe, or the plan to try to find a our cosmic cousins by searching for their TV shows isn't going to work.

So says, Seth Shostak, the loquacious and oratory gifted senior SETI scientist who addressed an overflow crowd at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne last week. His rather bold prediction stems from a meticulous survey, currently under way, of 1 million nearby stars for signs of alien-made radio signals from orbiting planets. The privately funded group recently began using a dedicated array of telescopes in northern California, thanks to seed funds from Paul Allen. In October, SETI scientists and astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, completed the first phase of a $50 million project, known as the Allen Telescope Array, to build and operate a 350-dish network to look for ET, as well as comb the cosmos for naturally occurring radio signals caused when, for example, stars form, galaxies collide and pulsars miss a beat due to gravity bending around black holes.

Thanks for the visit, Seth. Keep your ears to the ground and your sights on the stars.