| Archive Scientific Encyclopedia Vol IV-- The Men and Women Behind the Great Discoveries Mirrow, Jeanette (AD 2537-2642) Early Life: Jeanette Mirrow was born in the city of Philadelphia, where she had a fairly typical childhood. She attended elementary school and participated in most of the regular childhood activities. At the age of ten, she first saw and began to read a copy of Maria Alanova�s Universal Minds (published 2145 AD). This work has been considered one of the greatest contributions to humankind�s understanding of the Universe since Newton�s Principia Mathematica. Though she understood little of what she read in Alanova�s book, Jeanette was fascinated by it and this would shape the rest of her life as she gained more and more interest in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. Career: Jeanette Mirrow graduated from MIT in 2559 and joined the SETI Institute four years later. Here, she and her colleagues analyzed data and determined the locations to which they would send radio signals in an attempt to make contact with other civilizations. They became frustrated after some years, since hundreds of years had already passed since humanity had begun broadcasting to the stars and there was still no recognizable response. Most of the radio signals still hadn�t reached their destinations, but mankind has a short attention span. It was then that Jeanette Mirrow suggested that, as some had said before, we were sending the wrong kind of signal. It was possible, to her thinking, that alien species either lacked the ability to tell our signals apart from natural phenomenons, or that they used radio signals themselves, and this masked our broadcasts. It seemed clear to her that some alternate form of communication would be necessary. She drew on her background, which included both technology and the relatively new field of theoretical biology, and began to work with her colleagues to develop the means to send much more targeted, noticeable messages. The basic premise was to create and send a �transmission� of material that mimicked what they believed to be possible forms of life. Their first transmissions were much later revealed to be unsuccessful, but towards the end of Jeanette Mirrow�s career, some of the techniques had been refined. This led to the Banksmann-Marshall Discovery, which occurred a good while after her retirement. She lived just long enough to hear the news of Banksmann and Marshall�s success. Further Reading: Alanova, Maria. Universal Minds. Benton and Sons. New York, 2145. Carter, Nicholas. Jeanette Mirrow: A Biography. Johnson Publishing. Chicago, 2648 Timson, Marcus. The New Wave. Dell Publishing Co. New York, 2567. |