By Andrew Bridges
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 7 — For the tiny cadre of scientists probing the cosmos for signs of alien life, the most difficult question isn’t always, “Are we alone?” Sometimes it’s the shopworn, “What do you do?” from a fellow airline passenger.
JILL TARTER generally doesn’t like to answer that question when she first meets someone. She’s director of the Center for SETI Research, as in Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
But after four decades of frequent ridicule, the astronomers seeking signs of life in the heavens are gaining some respect. Since 1960, when Tarter’s colleague Frank Drake first pointed a radio telescope at a pair of nearby stars in hopes of dialing in an alien broadcast, there have been about 100 searches for E.T. signals.
No space aliens have been found.
But new planets have. Astronomers have located more than 100 outside our solar system since the first was discovered in 1995.
Whether those distant worlds teem with life, much less intelligent life, remains unknown. But each new discovery further energizes the search for E.T.
Even NASA — shaken from its second disaster in manned space flight — is getting back into the act. It’s been a full decade since it cut off money for SETI amid cries in the halls of Congress that it was bankrolling a hunt for “little green men.”
Some scientists are beginning to talk in terms of when, not if, they’ll be able to answer a question that’s vexed humankind probably since we first peered upward at the stars that pierce the dark.
Read on...
http://www.msnbc.com/news/960462.asp?0na=x2301270-
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 7 — For the tiny cadre of scientists probing the cosmos for signs of alien life, the most difficult question isn’t always, “Are we alone?” Sometimes it’s the shopworn, “What do you do?” from a fellow airline passenger.
JILL TARTER generally doesn’t like to answer that question when she first meets someone. She’s director of the Center for SETI Research, as in Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
But after four decades of frequent ridicule, the astronomers seeking signs of life in the heavens are gaining some respect. Since 1960, when Tarter’s colleague Frank Drake first pointed a radio telescope at a pair of nearby stars in hopes of dialing in an alien broadcast, there have been about 100 searches for E.T. signals.
No space aliens have been found.
But new planets have. Astronomers have located more than 100 outside our solar system since the first was discovered in 1995.
Whether those distant worlds teem with life, much less intelligent life, remains unknown. But each new discovery further energizes the search for E.T.
Even NASA — shaken from its second disaster in manned space flight — is getting back into the act. It’s been a full decade since it cut off money for SETI amid cries in the halls of Congress that it was bankrolling a hunt for “little green men.”
Some scientists are beginning to talk in terms of when, not if, they’ll be able to answer a question that’s vexed humankind probably since we first peered upward at the stars that pierce the dark.
Read on...
http://www.msnbc.com/news/960462.asp?0na=x2301270-