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 Previous: Foundation for Amateur Radio Announces Scholarship Winners for 2002 |  Next: FCC Inches Closer to Full Strength as Adelstein Hearing Set |
By Stan Horzepa,
WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
July 13, 2002
This week, our search of the Internet turned up a Web site dedicated to one of the biggest searches you can imagine: the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI).
H. Paul Shuch, N6TX, uses his Amateur Radio skills to search for intelligence out there among the billions and billions of stars that encompass the Universe. Paul is the main man behind the organization known as The SETI League, which is "a grassroots, international alliance of amateur and professional radio astronomers, radio amateurs, microwave experimenters and digital signal processing enthusiasts, who have banded together in a systematic, scientific search of the heavens to detect credible evidence of intelligent, extra-terrestrial life."
When the US Congress stopped funding NASA's SETI program in 1993, Paul started the SETI League to fill the gap. According to The SETI League Web site, SETI is "dedicated to privatizing the electromagnetic Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Together, over a thousand members in five dozen countries are keeping alive the quest for our cosmic companions."
 Learn how to use homebrewed Amateur Radio telescope equipment to search for extra-terrestrial intelligence at The SETI League web site. |
SETI League members use homebrewed Amateur Radio telescope equipment to search the skies for microwave signals that may originate from intelligence beyond the humankind sources. The equipment costs anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars to build depending on your construction skills and ability to scrounge parts. Although of modest sensitivity, the amateur equipment may be capable of detecting microwave radiation from technologically advanced civilizations out to a distance of several hundred light years. Although, no one has received that definitive signal indicating extra-terrestrial intelligence, they have succeeded in hearing some interesting stuff, as demonstrated by the web site's "What we've heard so far" link.
The SETI League Web site is jam-packed with information and is truly a source for everything you want to know about SETI. However, for a quick take of what The SETI League is all about, read the information at the "The SETI League FAQ Sheet" link.
By the way, The ARRL Foundation, the charitable arm of ARRL, just issued a $3000 grant to the SETI League for the design and construction of a next-generation radio telescope prototype. The Very Small Array (VSA), now under construction, combines eight standard satellite TV dishes to form a radio telescope of unique flexibility.
Until next time, keep on surfin'
Editor's note:
Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, resides in downtown Wolcott, Connecticut, and is a member
of the QQCC (QST quarter century club), i.e., he has been a QST writer for 25
years. Since getting his ticket in 1969, Stan has sampled nearly every entrée
in the Amateur Radio menu (including a stint as Connecticut Section Manager),
but he keeps coming back to his favorite preoccupations: VHF and packet radio.
As a result, he runs a 2-meter APRS digipeater from his mountaintop location in
central Connecticut. Stan has been a long time advocate of using computers with
Amateur Radio and wrote programs to dupe contests and calculate antenna
bearings way back in 1978. Today, he uses his Mac to surf the Internet
searching for that perfect ham radio web page. To contact Stan, send e-mail to wa1lou@arrl.net.
| Previous: Foundation for Amateur Radio Announces Scholarship Winners for 2002 | Next: FCC Inches Closer to Full Strength as Adelstein Hearing Set |
