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Alien call II

© Rodolfo Astrada

Surprisingly, as smoothly as is went writing the first part for this article, the second one proved to be a much tougher nut to crack. In fact, I had planned a regular issue, but had to split in two once arrived near the 1500 words mark and feeling only halfway through at best.

Trouble begun when I noticed some pieces I was researching to conform a survey of past and present developments, proved not to fit very well.
An April 2001 article in Sky & Telescope by Seth Shostak from Project Phoenix brought a survey of the field, yet surprisingly made no mention of Carl Sagan and Paul Horwitz microwave work, neither results from Ohio State University and Dr. John Kraus radio observatory, or Jill Tarter (purported inspiration for the feminine character of Carl Sagan's Contact novel, starred by Jody Foster in the movie version). Herself profiled in the November 2002 issue of Scientific American, head of SETI.

The sometimes embittered controversy among supporters of radio based searches as opposed to optical approaches did not help either. Throw in the lack of official commitment probably stemming from the fact that the scientific community at large shies away from a line of work dangerously close to UFO and sensationalist media appetites.

It took some time to untangle available information in order to arrive to a (hopefully) decent coverage.

The facts

If something is common to all involved in the search for extraterrestrial signals, is recognition for Frank Drake's work - which we covered it in the previous part - as being the foundation of this discipline.

Simultaneous with Drake work in 1960, The Ohio State University put into operation its own radiotelescope, though an unusual one for that matter. Big Ear as it came to be known, was designed by Dr. John Kraus and covered an area equivalent to three football fields.
It was not designed for alien listening either, but to perform a thorough sky radio mapping. By 1977 it had no more funding, so it was kept in operation through a vounteer group listening for suspect signals, computer processed to increase capabilities beyond the original manual approach used by Drake.

August 15, 1977. As the telescope listening beam swept through the sky following Earth's rotation, a powerful signal emerged from the background noise, grew and peaked in intensity, and faded back in perfect synchrony as if a fixed source in the sky had passed through the instrument's focus. When Jerry Ehman noticed the computer printout, he could only scribble the now famous "Wow" quote alongside.