KEVIN KLAUS

Jill Tarter, director of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence at the SETI Institute, stands next to a telescope at Steward Observatory on Thursday night. Tarter, who was the inspiration for the novel and movie "Contact," talked about whether planets besides Earth are inhabitable or contain life.

Tuesday October 16, 2001

SETI director addresses alien life, intelligence

The question of whether or not habitable planets beside Earth exist "will probably be settled within the next two decades," said Jill Tarter, director of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence at the SETI Institute, Thursday night at the Steward Observatory.

"Good planets are hard to find," she said.

Tarter, who inspired the heroine role in Carl Sagan's 1985 novel Contact, addressed a packed house with background information and updates on the progress of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence program, which she has been a driving force behind since its establishment in the late 1970s.

The SETI program is searching the near and far reaches of the universe for traces of life, both intelligent and unintelligent, Tarter said. The search for life begins with a search for how life may have originated, and what conditions, therefore, are necessary for life to exist.

Tarter said in the solar system, the answer to the origin of life is being studied, both on Earth and Mars.

Deep sea "black smokers" - hydrothermal vents in the Earth's crust - may be able to provide insight into how life began on Earth. On Mars, subterranean aquifers may hold clues to whether or not life ever existed there, which would be very strong evidence for the ubiquity of life throughout the universe, Tarter said.

SETI is searching for planets outside the solar system that may resemble Earth in terms of size and distance from the nearest sun. These planets are the most probable locations to find life.

However, Tarter said, the search for Earth-like planets is difficult.

"It is like looking for a firefly on a stadium light from miles away," she said.

Despite those odds, 66 of these Earth-like planets have been discovered nearby, Tarter said.

"The probability of success is difficult to estimate, but if we never search, the chance of success is zero," she said.

The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence is really the search for extra-terrestrial technology, Tarter said.

According to a UA press release on Tarter's discussion, "technology" for the SETI community is pragmatically defined as the ability to build large transmitters.

Since its initiation, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence has involved sending and receiving radio transmissions into and from space in order to broadcast human presence on Earth and provoke response from extra-terrestrials.

To date, Tarter said there have been no confirmed signals from extra-terrestrial intelligence. She said that the chances of such a success will improve greatly with the building of a large telescopic array designed to improve transmission capabilities.

The Allen Telescope Array is projected to be built in 2004 in northern California. It will be comprised of 350 radio telescopes, all of which will be coordinated to transmit a signal much more effectively than even the largest individual telescope - the Arecibo telescope located in Puerto Rico.

"The Arecibo telescope is like looking through a straw at the sky," Tarter said, whereas, "the ATA's (viewing area) is five times the size of the full moon."

As a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, Tarter became involved in an early project that searched for extra-terrestrial life. Later, she was introduced to the newly formed SETI program at NASA Ames Research Center where she was applying for a resident associateship.

She remained with the program until Congress ended its funding in 1993, after which researchers and a concerned public formed the privately funded SETI Institute.

Tarter was appointed the Director of SETI at the SETI Institute and in 1997, was appointed to the new position of the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI.