search for extraterrestrial intelligence

Ten years ago, my computer had a lot of junk on it. There was Napster, of course; Snood, which almost caused me to fail out of high school; and a weird screensaver that promised to find some aliens.

We've talked in this space in the past few months about detecting the existence of Earth-like planets in other solar systems, and on the educated guesswork which goes into putting a number on the probability of intelligent life existing out there as well. You may remember that the discovery of terrestrial planets is well on its way as technology improves; and that the Drake equation—with all its assumptions—has proved to be remarkably accurate.

SETI@home—part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence—is one of the earliest successful distributed computing projects. Its intent is to discover the presence of extraterrestrial life by analyzing radio signals from deep space. I remember the excitement of joining in late 1999, watching the candy-colored bars make their way across the client screen as my computer worked to detect meaningful variations in the cloud of noise. SETI has not yet been successful—that would be pretty big news—but the distributed computing model that has come out of it has.

Scientists with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute switched on the Allen Telescope Array, a field of 42 radio dishes that will listen for signs of alien life. Eventually, a total of 350 such devices will be deployed around the world.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen contributed $25 million to the $50 million project, which just might solidify his status as the coolest space junkie on the planet, since he was also the wallet behind SpaceShipOne.

Scientists say the telescopes could help them learn more about how galaxies evolve, but honestly, don't we have enough observatories busy with that business? Stay focused on the aliens, guys.—Gregory Mone

After innovative aircraft designer Burt Rutan unveiled SpaceShipOne and the White Knight, the tandem he hopes will win the X Prize, there was speculation that billionaire and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen provided the seed capital. Employees at Allen's investment company, Vulcan Ventures, won't comment on his involvement, and representatives of Rutan's Scaled Composites have stayed mum. But Allen would actually be conspicuous by his absence from the New Space Race, given the stream of other Silicon Valley and Seattle high-tech moguls rushing in to stake their claim to outer space.

If ET is out there, chances are SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) will hear him first-thanks in no small part to Steven Spielberg, the man behind 1982's smash ET: The Extra Terrestrial, who donated $100,000 to Carl Sagan's Planetary Society in 1985 to keep its receivers pointing heavenward. With Spielberg set to re-release the sci-fi classic on March 22, we thought we'd check in with Louis Friedman, head of the Planetary Society, to see how the search for the real ET is going.
Popular Science So have aliens dropped us a line yet?