Despite the Congress decision to stop NASA�s SETI project, the future of SETI continues to look bright. In conjunction with the UC Berkeley, the SETI institute will introduce the Allen Telescope Array coming up in 2005. Primarily funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, this magnificent collection will combine about 350 6-meter telescopes to produce the collecting area of a single 100-meter telescope. The Array will operate 24 hours a day and 7 days a week in the Cascades just North of Mt. Lassen (Calif), and will be dedicated entirely to SETI research. This will allow astronomers to target different stars simultaneously. It is estimated that this ability will speed up SETI targeted searching by a factor of at least 1,000. The continued influence of large donors such as Paul Allen allows us to develop telescope programs specific to SETI. This will speed up the learning curve for astronomers all over the world and provide optimism for the future.

               Though much of our focus today has been on radio waves, it is possible that extraterrestrial worlds might use other methods of communication. The use of light as a communicator has long been pondered in the scientific community. However, optical signals have not received the attention that radio signals have because of a few reasons. On one hand, it requires far less energy to send radio waves than it does light, thus researchers believe alien intelligence would prefer the use of radio as a communicator. Additionally, light tends to be absorbed by a number of elements floating between the stars, usually by interstellar dust. Therefore, radio has always seemed to be the most logical method of communication to pursue. However, with the continued development of technology, these other forms of communication might become more reasonable to explore.

Other Possible Types of Signals:

     *  Ultraviolet Light

     *  X-Rays

     *  Gravity Waves

     *  Short Light Pulses





Nicholas Friedman
Gavin Cree