-Caveat Lector-
There's got to be DOZENS of these in the West's major news
service wires EACH DAY lately!! And, most aren't just talking
seriously about ET life being possibleTHEY'RE TALKING
INTELLIGENT LIFE!
In the early 80's there were what...NONE?!?! ...A decade ago,
what? ...far less than a dozen serious articles in the main
stream news regarding even an infinitesimally small possibility
of even NONintelligent ET life IN AN ENTIRE YEAR
Look, OBVIOUSLY all it takes is for a few Wrigleys, Hursts,
Bigelos, et al., to TELL their people/editors that they want more
of these assignments handed out every day...
FACT: Editors ARE handing out more of these assignments EVERY
DAY...so numerous that not only are the reporters probably bored
$h!tless with them, but for sure WE ARE!
A person's gotta be really dense to think SOMETHING isn't being
heaped on usLIKE A BIG DAWG IN A PANIC!
--begin forward--
Extraterrestrial Life Sought
.c The Associated Press
By MICHELLE LOCKE
HAT CREEK, Calif. (AP) - On a high desert plain, with silvery
green sagebrush roasting under a glowing ball of sun, astronomer
Jack Welch looks at the sky and wonders.
For years, he's studied the stars, uncovered the secrets of
their distant fire. Now, as the first professor to hold the new
chair dedicated to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
at the University of California at Berkeley, Welch is embarking
on a new venture - listening for the alien civilizations that may
lie beyond the stars.
The future is out there, he thinks. One day, he hopes to hear
it.
``We're listening for technologies like our own,'' he says.
Welch, an expert in star formation, has been coming to the
mountains of Northern California for years, studying stellar
chemistry at Berkeley's Hat Creek Radio Observatory, some 230
miles northeast of the university.
Last fall, he was appointed to the Watson and Marilyn Alberts
Chair for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a field
of study commonly called SETI.
``The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is like taking a
big leap and saying, 'Well, look, if there's organic chemistry
going on, why don't we just - boom - listen?,''' he says,
striking his hands together for emphasis. ``Why don't we just go
right to the top?''
Some think Welch and his colleagues are wasting their time.
``There are excellent reasons to expect that technological
intelligence occurs only very rarely in the universe,'' Ben
Zuckerman, a professor of astronomy at the University of
California at Los Angeles, says in an e-mail interview.
Zuckerman opposes public funding of SETI research but says he
wishes the researchers good luck provided they stick to private
funds. He said the idea that aliens are out there ``is supported
only by Copernican argument and wishful thinking.''
By Copernican argument, Zuckerman refers to a world view -
dating back to the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus' discovery that
the Earth revolves around the sun - that there's nothing
particularly special about life on Earth and it could therefore
exist elsewhere.
Congress withdrew NASA funding for SETI in 1993 amid cutbacks
and criticism. The work continued after a number of Silicon
Valley entrepreneurs stepped in with private support.
On the other end of the spectrum are those who seem a little too
willing to believe: the UFO enthusiasts with their tales of
bright lights on country roads who make the SETI scientists
groan.
Welch says no unexplained radio signal has been received in
decades of listening, let alone a visitation. ``My own feeling is
they're less likely to be flying around in a spaceship than to be
parked on a planet somewhere broadcasting,'' he says.
Having a chair at prestigious Berkeley - one endowed with
$500,000 to boot - is vindication for SETI researchers trying to
demonstrate their work is science, not fiction.
``It shows that SETI has been recognized as an important part of
mainstream science,'' says Frank Drake, president of the Mountain
View-based SETI Institute and a pioneer of the use of radio
telescopes in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Welch has strong ties to the SETI Institute. He's on the board
of directors and is married to Jill Tarter, project scientist for
Project Phoenix, the institute's search program. Tarter was the
model for the astronomer played by Jodie Foster in the 1997 movie
``Contact.''
Welch's job makes the couple a two-chair pair; Tarter holds the
institute's Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI.
A former director of UC Berkeley's Radio Astronomy Laboratory,
Welch took a roundabout route to SETI, spending most of his
career in orthodox astronomy. But with each major discovery, he
became more convinced that the possibility of life elsewhere
existed.
``The numbers are sort of overwhelming,'' he says, reeling off
the arguments for life beyond Earth: billions of stars, millions
of planets, the discovery of water and other organic chemicals
floating
