The SETI Observer

Dear SETI enthusiasts:

Odds favor my son or one of his teammates hitting at least one game-winning home run during this baseball season. I say this as a proud parent and as an objective observer—they're pretty darn good! Still, every game is different, every inning fresh, every crack of the bat stirring. Spring baseball season with my son is a big part of my life. It is rewarding, it is exciting, it is important to me. This is equally true for each deployment of the SETI Institute's Project Phoenix.

It's silent in the downstairs Phoenix offices. For days, the halls rang with activity, packing, crating, carting, and loading. With the equipment on its way to the world's largest telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, and the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Manchester, England, our scientists followed, departing in shifts.

Now, the action has completely shifted to the radio telescopes in Puerto Rico and England, as Project Phoenix continues its possibly very long search for ET. I hope you'll join me between now and April 29 in checking SETIcam, from time to time. Although I've been there often, I never tire of watching our scientists at work in the Arecibo control room.

Even when I'm attending an evening ball game this spring, you can be sure I'll have my cell phone with me, ready for the detection announcement that would be a cosmic home run. The odds are far less favorable for detection than for a game-winning homer on the diamond, but if there's a signal out there, I know we'll find it. Our Phoenix team is pretty darn good.

I invite you now to explore the links of this month's SETI Observer.

Thomas Pierson
CEO, SETI Institute

Be one of the first five to answer the following question correctly and get a cool SETI Institute t-shirt. We'll post the answer in next month's e-newsletter. Choose the phrase that best completes this statement and send your answer to newsletter@seti.org.

Pick the phrase that best completes the following sentence. Programmable Detection Modules (PDMs) are:

1. currently being tested at Jodrell Bank Observatory for future use at Arecibo.
2. in use only at the Arecibo Observatory during Project Phoenix.
3. important components of the search system used for Project Phoenix.
4. hand held SETI detectors.

In the last SETI Observer, we asked:

What point does Rocco Mancinelli make about the element Nitrogen in “Voices?”

1. Nitrogen-loving bacteria can be found in the salt crusts of evaporation pools where he collects halophiles.
2. Nitrogen is far less important to living systems than carbon, but is interesting because it’s current abundance on Mars may indicate that life originated there.
3. The Nitrogen cycle is of equal importance to both the spin and rinse cycles.
4. In a world without Nitrogen you could have candy, but no creatures to eat the candy.

The correct answer is "D"

Finally, two readers alerted us to an error in last month’s SETI Challenge answer. While we correctly identified the answer, the question itself was incompletely reprinted. It should have read, "Pick the letter that does not correctly complete this sentence:"

We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.