Current SETI Projects:

               Today, SETI lives on in privately funded projects all across the world. Individual groups and donors fund some SETI programs, while large Universities run others. Radio telescopes today are designed to use the method of looking at individual stars (targeted search) or a sweeping technique (sky survey). Most searches taking place today targeted searches because it is most logical to look for life that might exist on planets around Sun-like stars. Noted below are a couple of the most highly publicized ongoing SETI projects:

Project Phoenix:

                Project Phoenix was designed as a resurrection of NASA�s program that was cancelled in 1993. The project began in 1995, using the Parkes 210 foot telescope in New South Wales, Australia. The project moved back to Green Bank in West Virginia, where it focused on the Northern stars until 1998. Today, Phoenix is making observations with the 1,000 foot radio telescope Arecibo, located in Puerto Rico. It listens for radio signals from an array of about 1,000 nearby sun-like stars. No single star targeted by Phoenix is more than 200 light years away. It detects a range of signals from 1,000 to 3,000 MHz. Though computers do most of the work, astronomers pay close attention to signals that come in narrow bandwidths (about 1 MHz wide). Much like our radio stations here on Earth, intelligent beings are probably able to send out narrow bandwidths, thus Project Phoenix looks for these. About half of the 1,000 targeted stars have been examined for signals, yet no significant transmissions have been found to date.

SERENDIP:

               SERENDIP (The Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations) is a program funded by the UC Berkeley SETI program and is the only �piggyback� SETI program in the world. This means that the project shares a telescope with another ongoing project and the aim of the telescope is based on the needs of these other programs. In the case of SERENDIP, it shares the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico with Project Phoenix. SERENDIP also has a southern focus that uses the Parkes telescope in Australia.





Nicholas Friedman
Gavin Cree