Features - SETI Institute

Explorer
Fourth Quarter, 2008
Volume 5, Number 3
SETI INSTITUTE

The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and
explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.
We believe we are conducting the most profound search in human history —
to know our beginnings and our place among the stars.
CONTENTS
Features
10 Sorting Out Signals by Yvette Cendes, 2008 REU student
17 Northern Wisconsin Astronomy: A Family Affair by Earl Finkler, TeamSETI member
22 2008 Summer Students by Cynthia Phillips
Departments
8
7 ATA Tunes in Voyager 1 by Tom Kilsdonk
12 The Teachable Moment by Edna DeVore
20 Protecting Mars from Earthlings by Margaret Race
In Every Issue
3 Letter from the CEO by Thomas Pierson
3 From the Editor’s Desk by Seth Shostak
4 Meet our 2008 Board of Trustees
5 Inside the Board Room
8 The Big Picture by Seth Shostak
15 Plan for Your Future and the Future of Science
11 Why I support the SETI Institute
18 SETI and Society by Doug Vakoch
12
20
Explorer
Editor in Chief - Seth Shostak
Designers - Ly Ly and
Sophie Essen
Director, Editorial Board -
Karen Randall
Contributor - Gail Jacobs
Contact us
If you have questions about
TeamSETI, please contact us at
(866) 616-3617
membership@seti.org
SETI Institute
515 North Whisman Road
Mountain View, CA 94043
Telephone: (650) 961-6633
FAX: (650) 961-7099
www.seti.org
On the Cover
The Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter
sails above Valles Marineris.
2 SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008

Letter f r o m t h e CEO
Dear SETI Institute Friend,
As I write this we are less than two weeks away from electing a
new President of the United States. The world’s economy is looking
very anemic and fragile. Military conflicts still dominate world
news. Far too many families around the globe are worried about
how to educate their children and feed, clothe, and house their
families. These are stressful times for most, and we are all hoping
for a brighter future.
So, one might ask, where does the SETI Institute fit into all of this?
The work of our team, at some level, represents the optimistic
side of what it means to be human. Perhaps our efforts will lead
to an entirely new understanding of how life came to be here
on Earth. Perhaps someday we will confirm the existence of life
beyond our planet. The answers to such fundamental questions,
if we succeed, will certainly enrich all of humanity.
This current issue of Explorer magazine focuses on research related
to Mars. It is a neighboring planet that has fascinated humans
for centuries, and very possibly once harbored emerging life. Perhaps
even today microbial life ekes out an existence somewhere
on the Red Planet. What a privilege it is to be able to examine
these profound possibilities. And, if some future experiment confirms
microbial life on Mars, or elsewhere in our solar system,
imagine the importance of that fact!
The SETI Institute exists to explore, understand, and explain the
origin, nature, and prevalence of life in the universe. We can only
do this with the support of our generous sponsors. We thank you
for giving us the opportunity.
If life’s out there, we’re going to find it!
Very best regards,
Tom Pierson
CEO, SETI Institute
Fr o m t h e
Ed i t o r’s Desk
By Seth Shostak
“Hey, guess what, Seth? I’ve got
the martian weather report: it’s
snowing!”
The aerospace engineer was
clearly excited by news recently
radioed to Earth by NASA’s Phoenix
Lander. White stuff was falling
through Red Planet skies.
True, the snow was unlikely to improve
skiing conditions, as the flakes would surely
sublimate before hitting the Barsoomian slopes.
But precipitation of any kind on Mars is remarkable
because it’s an ordinary phenomenon on a not-soordinary
world. Anything as familiar as a snowstorm
comforts us in the way that the discovery of familiar
behaviors in foreign cultures do. The exotic becomes
comprehensible.
There is, of course, no hope for powdery snowbanks
on Mars. As far as we know, the only long-lived
surface water is the granite-hard ice at the poles.
But a flurry – even of the truncated variety espied
by Phoenix – reminds us that weather on this planet
might once have been more like our own; before a
thinned atmosphere and the end of plate tectonics
made the climate relentlessly bleak and dry.
In 1784, English astronomer Wiliam Herschel, who
had observed that both the length of the martian
day and the tilt of its axis were nearly identical to
Earth’s, concluded that the inhabitants of the Red
Planet “probably enjoy a situation in many respects
similar to ours.”
His martian weather report may seem naïve today,
but a few billion years earlier it might have been
right on target.
SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008 3

Bo a r d o f Trustees
Meet Ou r 2008 Bo a r d o f Trustees
Da v id Pr at t (Ch a i r m a n o f t h e Bo a r d)
Retired Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Adobe
Systems, Inc. • Former Executive Vice President and Chief Operating
Officer, Logitech, Inc.
Jo h n Gertz (Vi c e Ch a i r m a n)
Founder and CEO of Zorro Productions • Producer: motion pictures,
TV series, stage productions and ancillary programs focused primarily
on the character of Zorro
Gr e g Pa pa d o p o u l o s (Im m e d i at e Pa s t Ch a i r)
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Sun Microsystems
• Former Associate Professor of Engineering & Computer Science,
MIT
Th o m a s Pierson (Se c r e ta ry)
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, SETI Institute • Former Associate
Director for Research Administration, San Francisco State University
Foundation
Al a n Ba g l e y
Retired General Manager, with 37 years service, Hewlett-Packard
Company • Former Chairman of the Board, SocialTech, Inc.
Li nd a Be r n a r d i
Executive Vice President • Founder and CEO, ConnecTerra, Inc. •
Emeritus Board Member, the Anita Borg Institute • Emeritus Board
Member, Astia
Jo h n Bi l l i ng h a m
Retired Chief, with 38 years of service, NASA Ames Research Center
• Senior Scientist (advisory), SETI Institute
Jo e l Bi r nb a u m
Retired Senior Vice President of Research & Development, and Founding
Director of Computer Research Labs, Hewlett–Packard Company
• Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers, California Council on Science & Technology,
and Association for Computing Machinery
Ba r u c h Bl u m b e r g
Senior Advisor to the President, Fox Chase Cancer Center • Former
Director, NASA Astrobiology Institute and Senior Advisor to the Administrator
of NASA • Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
in 1976 and inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame
in 1993
Gr e g o r y Co y
Certified Public Accountant • Member, American Institute of Certified
Public Accountants, Arizona and California Societies of Certified
Public Accountants, and Institute of Internal Auditors
Pa u l Elliott
Founding member, Cerent • Distinguished Engineer, Cisco Systems
• Holds 13 patents in frequency generation, system synchronization
and product architecture
An d r e w Fr a k n o i
Chair, Astronomy Department, Foothill College • Director, Project AS-
TRO • Founding Editor, “Astronomy Education Review” • California
Professor of the Year 2007
Da n e Gl a s g o w
Principal, Positronic, Inc • Former Director of Program Management,
Microsoft Live Search Product • Former President, Jump.com
Da v id Lid d l e
General Partner at U.S. Venture Partners • Retired President and CEO
of business incubator Interval Research Corporation
Steven Mo u r n i ng
Partner, Jerold Panas, Linzy and Partners • Director Emeritus and Dean
Emeritus, University of Wisconsin Institute for Healthcare Philanthropy
• Former Chief Development Officer, Palo Alto Medical Foundation
William J. We l c h
The Watson and Marilyn Alberts Chair in the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence, and Professor, Graduate School, University of California,
Berkeley • Member, National Academy of Sciences
Fr a n k Dr a k e (Ch a i r m a n Emeritus)
Director, the SETI Institute’s Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life
In The Universe • Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences •
Member, National Academy of Sciences
Sa n d r a Fa b e r (Trustee Emeritus)
University Professor, University of California • Professor, Astronomy
and Astrophysics, UC Santa Cruz • Member, National Academy of
Sciences
Da v id Na g e l (Trustee Emeritus)
Former President and Chief Executive Officer of PalmSource, Inc. •
Former Chief Technology Officer, AT&T, and President of AT&T Labs
Ch a r l e s To w n e s (Trustee Emeritus)
Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of California at Berkeley •
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964 and the National Medal
of Science 1982 • Member, National Academy of Science, and National
Academy of Engineering • Inventor of the maser, co-inventor
of the laser
4 SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008

Bo a r d o f Trustees
In s i d e t h e Bo a r d Ro o m w i t h
Jo e l Bi r nb a u m
Photo credit: Seth Shostak
“
One of the particularly exciting
things about the work at
the Institute is that it attracts
great thinkers ... The people
are here to create a foundation
upon which others can build.
”
When did you become aware of the SETI Institute’s work,
and what about it initially intrigued you?
I became aware of what would become the SETI Institute on
my first day of work at Hewlett-Packard, in January 1981. I had
been hired to replace Barney Oliver, long-time director of HP
Research and Development, who was soon to retire. Barney
told me, in his marvelously interesting way, of the reports he
had co-written that would soon lead to the creation of SETI.
He had a very global and noble view of SETI as the realization
of the grandest intellectual quest humans could address. I remember
him saying that he could not imagine anything more
stimulating or important to consider than such questions as
“are we alone?” and “where did we come from?” Of course,
along with this are the challenging technology problems:
where should we search? How can we do it most efficiently?
Do we answer if we find something? What kind of electronics,
telescopes, and people do we need? I was hooked.
Since childhood, I’ve been a science fiction addict. As I learned
more about science, I began reading Ray Bradbury, Robert
Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and the other great
science fiction authors somewhat differently. Good science fiction
asks provocative questions about the physics of our world,
and frequently posits interesting options and alternatives. Often
we are asked only to suspend disbelief in a single axiom or
characteristic to reach startling conclusions. The SETI Institute,
which uses leading edge science and technology to try to answer
these questions, appealed to my professional as well as
my personal interests.
You are a highly respected, world-renowned technologist
and visionary. How do you see the research undertaken
at the SETI Institute today aligning with possible scientific
applications in the “real” world so it is relevant and
of value to future generations?
One of the things that is particularly exciting about the work at
the Institute is that when you’re pushing the envelope of science
and engineering to measure signals that are more faint,
or that are coming in at a greater rate or that require more
storage or may have a pattern that is not one of the patterns
you’re used to, it forces smart people to think deeply about
whether the techniques they’ve been using are the right ones
for this new class of challenges.
SETI@Home was one of the earliest examples of a widely distributed
computer network that was created to attack the is-
SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008 5

Bo a r d o f Trustees
sue of processing at reasonable cost a mountain of collected
data when we can’t afford to have a stable full of supercomputers.
Ingenious people thinking about that problem specifically
for SETI ended up addressing a more general problem.
A real-world result is that the supercomputer industry is basically
almost extinct because people discovered that a lot of
little cooperating computers are much more accessible than
one large one.
Of course, there have been many other contributions in signal
processing: high-speed search algorithms and the electronics
necessary for measuring signals in the most rapid and accurate
way. How can we search more rapidly than with sporadic vigils
on the world’s largest radio telescopes. Was there another
way? That led to the solution now known as the Allen Telescope
Array, which, while created for SETI, will most likely help
define the future of all radio astronomy. We’re building very
sensitive antennas and detectors, initially intended to look at
space signals, but who is to say that they will not have other
important applications one day.
These are just a few examples of why the kind of bleeding-edge
science, electronics, algorithms, mathematics, and computer
science that are required to answer the very difficult questions
we’ve asked at the Institute are likely to produce results in areas
that have applicability far greater than the problems for
which they were initially posed.
What do your friends say when you tell them you’re
involved with the SETI Institute?
Most people’s first reaction is “Wow, gee, that must be fun…
Really, no kidding… So, you’re involved in that?” I guess they
don’t make the connection to science and technology research
because for most of the non-scientific people, if you talk about
the search for extraterrestrial intelligence they think of little
green men and the Star Wars Hollywood version of space travel.
They think of me and people like me who are supposed to
be the serious science types and they are somewhat surprised.
Then they want to know about the Institute and I tell them. I
am aware there are people who question the ethics of spending
money to look for the origins of life when people in the
world are starving, etc. I inform them the Institute is primarily
privately funded, and that we must feed our intellects as
well as our bodies. Personally, I believe the government should
sponsor this type of scientific research, just as it sponsors music
and art.
If money were no object, what would you hope the Institute
could accomplish?
I think the current goals are great, and I wouldn’t change
them. However, more money would enable the Institute to
pursue their current goals more vigorously. I very much like the
part of the Institute that is concerned with the origins of life
in the universe and am in awe of the people who dive under
icebergs and climb to the top of volcanoes to understand it
better. If money were no object, we could do more of this kind
of exploration and perhaps gain increased insights as to where
else to look for microbial and other early forms of life. I’d also
love to see our top scientists spend less time fundraising so
they could devote most of their time to pursuing their craft.
This is only possible if we could get enough money to form
some type of endowment that would stabilize the Institute’s
financial future.
How do you believe the SETI Institute’s work will inspire
the next generation?
One of the particularly exciting things about the work at the
Institute is that it attracts great thinkers. SETI is a long-term
project. The people at the Institute are here to create a foundation
upon which others can build. Some things will inevitably
be rethought and redone in the face of new science and
technology discoveries and inventions, but the key idea here is
that these are long-term quests of immense importance and
everyone knows they’re long-term.
SETI, properly endowed and funded, will have the luxury of
time, and it can take its time and do the job right. It can’t take
forever, because some people will lose interest, so it will need
to demonstrate progress along the way. I find that type of
dedication inspiring. Future generations will also include great
thinkers – scientists like Barney Oliver, Jill Tarter, and Frank
Drake – who envision a universe of possibilities and want to
devote their lives to answering these very difficult yet very important
questions. I’d like the SETI Institute to be the destination
for those who follow and thrive on searching for answers
to very abstract questions. Because they are so abstract and
intrinsically difficult, these questions are the most interesting,
and discoveries made could very much change the way we
think about our universe. I find that very inspirational.
Read the complete interview with Joel Birnbaum at
http://www.seti.org/Birnbaum
6 SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008

Cen t e r fo r SETI Re s e a r c h
Figure 1. Waterfall plot showing the signal received from Voyager 1, located between the green guidelines. The horizontal axis is frequency,
and the vertical axis is time.
ATA Tunes In Voyager 1
By Tom Kilsdonk
On July 12, 2008 the ATA/Prelude system achieved
a significant milestone by detecting the faint signal
from the Voyager 1 spacecraft for the first
time. Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 and is
rapidly leaving the Solar System. At the time
of the detection, it was nearly 10 billion miles away, or over
106 Astronomical Units. (1 AU is the mean distance from
the Earth to the Sun.) That’s more than twice as far as Pluto.
In order to gain enough sensitivity to hear this distant transmitter,
twelve of the 6.1 meter ATA antennas were combined electronically
into a single virtual telescope using the ATA beamformer.
The 8.4 GHz Voyager signal was then processed by the SETI
Prelude instrument, where the detection took place. One of the
resulting data products is shown in Figure 1. This “waterfall”
plot shows approximately 700 Hz of spectrum along the x-axis,
and 195 seconds of time along the y-axis. The Voyager signal
can be seen as a very faint diagonal trace running between,
and parallel to, the two green guide lines. Note that the power
of Voyager’s transmitter is roughly that of a refrigerator light.
Figure 2 shows another view of the same data but integrated
over time, and with the signal’s -0.75 Hz/sec frequency drift
removed. The spacecraft transmission is clearly seen as a large
peak within the plot.
Figure 2. An integrated spectrum of the Voyager signal. (Credit:
William C. Barott, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University)
The Voyager 1 spacecraft provides an excellent test signal for
confirming the effectiveness of the ATA dishes and beamformer,
and the correct functioning of the Prelude signal detection
system. It’s the next best thing to finding an extraterrestrial
intelligence.
Kilsdonk is a software engineer at the SETI Institute.
SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008 7

The Big Picture Seth Sh o s ta k
THE BIG PICTURE Seth Sh o s ta k
No Pa n ic in t h e Streets
One of the most intriguing aspects of the SETI
enterprise is considering what would happen
should the experiment succeed. What occurs if,
sometime next week, our multichannel receivers
light up with a narrowband signal coming from a
fixed spot on the sky?
This question has been often addressed – indeed, whole
conferences have been given over to the puzzle it poses.
A frequent approach to divining the answer has been to
consider historical analogs. An obvious one would be the discovery
of the New World. Then again, perhaps reaction
to a SETI discovery would be similar to the small
brouhaha that followed publication
of Copernicus’ work on an
Earth-centered cosmos. Or
maybe the correct model is
the more durable dust-up ignited
by Darwin’s “Origin of
Species.”
These historical precedents are
surely instructive. But it seems to
me that better analogs have come
from our investigations of Mars.
This nearby world has, for more
than a century , been the centerpiece
for repeated claims of habitation.
The first and most famous of these, and one that was endorsed
by scientists for three decades and more, was that a
vast, canal-building civilization was busily furrowing the Red
Planet. The earliest proclamations to this effect came from
Giovanni Schiaparelli, who in 1877 wielded an 8-inch refractor
at Milan’s Brera Observatory in an extended examination of
this world’s scratchy physiognomy. Schiaparelli was equivocal
about whether the straight features he saw lacing the martian
landscape were truly deliberate constructions or merely
natural geographic features. The Italian astronomer seemed
to change his mind depending on when you asked.
No matter: to American astronomer Percival Lowell, the canals’
most ardent and articulate promoter, there was no doubt as
to their origin. He argued that the slow desiccation of Mars
had compelled its inhabitants to irrigate their world by building
surface aqueducts visible from 35 million miles and more.
You would rightfully think that news of manifestly intelligent
life on the next rock out from the Sun – promoted and believed
by credentialed scientists – would generate a bit of parlor conversation.
Undoubtedly it did, but one thing it didn’t do is
either cause rioting in the streets or foment a crisis for organized
religion. It was mildly interesting to know that Mars was
littered with critters, but that news didn’t seem to be a noticeably
big page in the diaries of most of the citizenry. Scientists
tell us that another
planet sports thinking beings?
Pass the salt.
Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch
paid greater attention to
H. G. Wells’ 1898 fictional
account of the Martians
dropping their shovels
to make a trek to
Earth and take over
our water-logged
world: “The War of
the Worlds.” (It’s
unclear to what
extent Wells was
directly influenced by Lowell,
but presumably the former knew
of the latter’s work.) As it was, the man in the
street wasn’t overly exercised by Wells’ book; rather, he was
wound up by its spin-off.
The New York Times carries the story of Welles’ broadcast at the top
of the front page.
For four decades, Wells’ sci-fi novel had been just another
piece of Victorian literature. Then Howard Koch rewrote it
as a radio play for Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater. The radio
drama was broadcast on Halloween, 1938 (when Europe was
tensing up for war) and caused more audience reaction than
most. The New York Times reported that “Thousands of persons
called the police, newspapers and radio stations here and
in other cities of the United States and Canada seeking advice
on protective measures against the raids.” The paper also noted
that a score of people were treated for shock and hysteria.
Some New Yorkers even started moving furniture out of their
houses, although it’s unclear why that would help.
Mind you, this was rather a different situation than the claim
by astronomers that unseen beings were grooving the Red
Planet. In Koch’s fictional story, the Martians were getting personal,
forsaking their home turf and invading ours (New Jersey,
no less). But even so, the most significant reaction to the radio
8 SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008

“
The bottom line from more than a
century of such experience is simple:
the public has repeatedly been told
of extraterrestrial life – not from lightyears
away, but from light-minutes.
”
Orson Welles scares listeners during his 1938 “War of the Worlds’
broadcast.
One of Giovanni Schiaparelli’s maps of Mars, sketched through an
8-inch refractor in 1877.
play may be that multimillion-dollar lawsuits were filed against
the Columbia Broadcasting Company and the Mercury Theater.
None was successful.
So despite the widespread perception that the American citizenry
went nuts upon hearing Welles’ broadcast, the facts are
that the popular disequilibrium was mild.
The next opportunity for Mars to scare the good people of
Earth was more than a half-century later (1996) when scientists
announced that Red Planet residents had landed in Antarctica.
You may recall that in “The War of the Worlds,” the
incursion was repulsed – not by military action, but by bacteria.
The marauders from Mars were “slain, after all man’s defenses
had failed, by the humblest thing that God in His wisdom put
upon this earth.” In 1996, there was no need to rely upon
microbes for defense: the invaders were microbes, and they
were already dead.
NASA researchers made headlines for several days with their
claim that microscopic martian fossils were baked into a meteorite
named ALH 84001, a piece of Red Planet rock that was
more than 3 billion years old. Once again, the public reacted
with interest. But there was not a scintilla of panic or alarm.
Mind you, the visiting Martians were tiny – but was that reason
for complacency? Microbes from another world might unleash
who-knows-what sort of Andromeda strain pandemic?
And sure, the putative Martians were long dead. But their
descendants might still be in situ and infectious just a rocket
ride away. No one seemed overly worried.
The bottom line from more than a century of such experience
is simple: the public has repeatedly been told of extraterrestrial
life – not from light-years away, but from light-minutes. The
amount of disquiet attendant upon this news has been less
than imposing. Indeed, even the minimal panic of 1938 occurred
only because the aliens were thought to be aggressively
campaigning for control of the planet a mere 50 miles from
Manhattan.
For those who think that a SETI detection would provoke rioting
in the streets or a prophylactic government cover-up,
there’s a lesson to be learned. The public will be interested,
but it’s hard to argue that they’ll be moving the furniture out
of their homes.
Shostak is Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute and
host of the Institute’s science radio program, “Are We
Alone?”
SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008 9

Yvette Cendes and Billy Barott wield a signal analyzer in their hunt for RFI.
Sorting Out Signals
By Yvette Cendes
(photo: Yvette Cendes)
It’s late in the evening of a northern California night, and
the Allen Telescope Array has just detected an artificial
signal.
“Will you look at that,” murmurs Billy Barott, an ATA telescope
operator, as he points to a tall spike in the data just collected.
“It almost looks like … hey, what’s the allocation in this
part of the spectrum?”
I look up the frequency of the signal in a telephone-book sized
volume, and show him the entry: “Band reserved for aeronautical
navigation.” It was just another frequency rendered unusable
for radio astronomy by human-generated interference.
Soon, the Allen Telescope Array will begin its search for radio
signals of extraterrestrial origin. But virtually everything detected
by the radio telescopes will prove to have a much less
exciting source: artificial signals that are the hallmark of our
own civilization. While the ATA is located in a secluded valley
to block out broadcasts from radio and TV towers, things like
satellite radio, airplane beacons, and cell phones are easily detected
by the telescopes. They constitute what is called radio
frequency interference, or RFI for short.
“There was a student up here last year who saw something
odd in his data, and tracked it down to a BBC crewman’s cell
phone who was on site at the time,” explains Jill Tarter, my
mentor for the summer Research Experience for Undergraduates
(REU) program in which I was participating. She assigned
me to work on the RFI problem because, as she said, “One cell
phone is enough to shut down this array.”
Radio telescopes often have a large fraction of their spectral
coverage compromised due to this unwanted noise, and researchers
frequently have to throw out data from some radio
frequencies due to interference. For example, Arecibo,
the large radio dish in Puerto Rico, picks up interference every
twelve seconds from the airport radar in nearby San Juan. A
special system is in place to ignore data received on particular
frequencies.
“RFI is the gremlin of radio astronomy,” Billy explained. “It can
cause all kinds of problems.”
At the ATA, the exact extent of radio frequency interference still
hasn’t been fully determined. A big problem is the unknown
nature of the on-site local interference: the radio control room
is filled with digital processors, each giving off radiation at specific
clock frequencies. Multiples of these clock frequencies –
known as harmonics – are also emitted, which is noise that can
easily leak out to be detected by the antennas of the Array.
Figuring out what sort of RFI is troublesome at the ATA requires
taking data over a very broad spectrum, covering several gigahertz.
While obtaining such data from the radio telescopes
themselves is straightforward, collecting data from within the
control room itself isn’t so simple. Our first attempt to do so
involved using a spectrum analyzer – a handheld device that
10 SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008

could pass for a ray gun in an old science fiction movie – which
is capable of checking signal intensities over a large frequency
range. However we ran into a problem with sensitivity, which
culminated in Jill burning out her microwave oven in an attempt
to see a signal on the spectrum analyzer. That did not
bode well for our prospects. We ended up solving this problem
by taking a copper antenna and feeding the signal into an
unused antenna input where the spectrum could be analyzed
on a computer just like the other signals.
When looking at the full spectrum of data, the resulting information
is similar to a complicated forensics problem from CSI.
Each tall, thin spike at a given frequency is from an RFI source,
but how do you know what is responsible for each peak and
how are these various signals related? Is the signal from the
control room or somewhere off the array site? There is little
alternative to simply combing through the data for clues: is a
signal in a well-known broadcast band, or is the frequency a
harmonic of one of the computer clocks? Frequency analysis is
a task requiring a modicum of curiosity and a lot of patience.
The final plans for the Allen Telescope Array, when completed,
will require that a new control room be constructed: one that
is essentially an underground bunker that will significantly
shield the telescopes from radio frequency interference. Radio
astronomers will always grapple with unwanted signals from
our civilization however, and care has to be taken to ensure
that the next artificial signal detected isn’t merely one originating
from here at home.
Cendes is a physics major at Case Western Reserve University
and participated in the 2008 SETI Institute REU
program
Why
I Support
The SETI Institute
Kim Allender and his wife, Pam.
I remember reading a childrens book called By
Space Ship To The Moon in the early 1950s, and I
recall a drawing of a circular space station which
would be the platform for further space exploration.
In high school and college in the 60s, I
watched every space launch on television, often
getting up at 3 a.m. to do so.
As a recently retired 5th grade teacher, I’ve always
loved teaching space science. I believe
SETI is an essential effort to enrich our scientific
knowledge of the universe and of ourselves.
I’m pleased to have recently become a TeamSETI
member and in so doing, support the research of
the SETI Institute.
Yvette participated in the SETI Institute’s undergraduate summer
research program.
(photo: Seth Shostak)
Kim and Pam Allender joined TeamSETI in
June, 2008
SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008 11

Cen t e r fo r Ed u c at i o n & Pu b l i c Ou t r e a c h
Th e Te a c h a b l e Mo m e n t : Th e Fa c e o n Ma r s
By Edna DeVore
Mars has been invaded
by alien robots built by
Earthlings.
On the ground, the Spirit
and Opportunity rovers are still churning
across the landscape, and the Phoenix
Lander is testing arctic soils. Overhead,
NASA and ESA orbiters are imaging the
surface in exquisite detail. It’s all part of
the search for life on the Red Planet.
This makes Mars the logical focus for
teaching science as a part of current
events, and for using pseudoscientific
claims about Mars to foster critical thinking.
For example, the “Face on Mars”
presents an opportunity to generate the
teachable moment in classrooms.
A few years ago, I had a long conversation
with a high school science teacher
at the National Science Teachers Association’s
national conference about
education in a world where students are
continually exposed to pseudoscience or
even phony science – stuff they’ve heard
while watching television and reading
the tabloids. What do they believe is
real? The Face on Mars, alien autopsies,
Area 51 in the Nevada desert as
an alien storage area, the non-landings
on the moon, UFOs, alien kidnappings
– these are all grist for story telling and
speculation in the media. It’s easy for
uncritical kids (and adults) to believe the
“evidence” of alien beings and encounters
when it’s carefully gift-wrapped by
creative television producers who crank
out dramatic programs depicting these
events with well-trained actors and elaborate
sets.
The pseudoscience accounts are carefully
filmed and professionally narrated
as “documentaries” about mysteries, or
unexplained events. They aim to convince
the public that aliens have been
here or nearby on the moon or Mars,
and that the evidence is being covered
up by a grand conspiracy of seriously unfun
people in the government, universities,
and research organizations. Folks
like me. Any denials, alternative explanations,
or criticism of the evidence simply
prove that there’s a cover-up. But I think
your average high school student is too
smart to fall for this when provided genuine
evidence.
12 SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008

Cen t e r fo r Ed u c at i o n & Pu b l i c Ou t r e a c h
Take the Face on Mars. The first photograph
of this bumpy mesa was snapped
by NASA’s Viking Orbiter and released to
the public on July 31, 1976.
It is an intriguing image, and certainly
does look like a face. In fact, this Face on
Mars has inspired a whole library shelf of
books. True believers now find evidence
of a Pyramid and an Incan City as well.
All of this, of course, was photographed
by Viking but covered up by NASA officials.
I like to note that these pseudoscience
publications help to put bread on
the table and pay the rent for the creative
folks churning out books, articles,
and tabloid stories about the Face.
Imagine being a science teacher presenting
a unit on space and astronomy with
a classroom full of 15-year old students
who believe the television accounts of
the Face on Mars, cities on the moon,
alien autopsies, etc. You might give
them an overview of the characteristics
of the planets and their moons: the circumstance
that Jupiter’s red spot would
hold at least three Earths, for example.
That’s a cool factoid, but it isn’t likely to
grab them. The Face on Mars will. And
this was what I discussed with the science
teacher at NSTA.
The Face on Mars is a teachable moment
that can turn students into scientists if
you present the evidence. There is the
Viking photograph, taken in 1976 and
the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) and the
Mars Express (ME) photographs taken
decades later. Ask the students what they
see in the first photograph: like everyone
else, they will see a face. I see a face in
that photograph too. Humans interact
with the natural world by organizing
perception into recognizable form. Who
has not watched clouds on a summer
day, and seen horses, dragons, beautiful
people, or ships floating overhead? In
the early part of the last century, astronomer
Percival Lowell was convinced he
saw canals on Mars through his Arizona
telescope. Subsequently, other observers
and photography proved that his vision
was connecting broken features into
Top right: This picture is one of many taken in the northern
latitudes of Mars by the Viking 1 Orbiter in 1976 while
searching for a landing site for Viking 2.
The picture shows eroded mesa-like landforms. The huge
rock formation in the center, which resembles a human
head, is formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes,
nose and mouth. The feature is 1.5 kilometers (one mile)
across, with the sun angle at approximately 20 degrees.
The speckled appearance of the image is due to bit errors,
emphasized by enlargement of the photo. The picture
was taken on July 25 from a range of 1873 kilometers
(1162) miles).
Opposite and bottom right: images of face on Mars mesa
from MGS and ME.
SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008 13

Cen t e r fo r Ed u c at i o n & Pu b l i c Ou t r e a c h
lines. That civil engineering project was
all in Lowell’s mind, not on Mars.
We humans are pattern seekers, and
seeing familiar forms in strange places
helps us to organize our perceptions of
the natural world. There was a rock formation
near my childhood home in the
Sierra Nevada mountains that looked
like a bear. I never assumed that it was
carved by some unknown being to make
me ponder bears or believe in unknown
beings. I understood that it was jagged
granite, and the fact that it looked like
a bear was a coincidence. I also had to
stand in the right place to see the bear;
otherwise, it just looked like a mountain
peak. Like the bear, to see the Face on
Mars, you have to “stand” in the right
place, and at the right time of day, to get
the angle and lighting for the light and
shadows to make a face.
Move forward a couple of decades.
We’ve returned to Mars. We have new,
higher resolution photographs of the
same mesa taken by MGS and ME, including
views from different places at
different times of the day. The raw data
from MGS and ME are processed to
bring out the details on the mesa, and
a clear explanation for how scientists accomplish
this work helps students to understand
that there’s not a cover-up. It’s
more like an un-covering to convert raw
data to images. There are movies that allow
you to fly around the Face and check
out the terrain for yourself. http://www.
esa.int/esa-mmg/mmg.pl?b=b&keyword
=face&single=y&start=6&size=b
That’s the new, better evidence. What
does the mesa look like when seen more
clearly?
The images taken by MGS and ME reveal
the Face to be a rocky mesa, one of
many in the Cydonia region of Mars. It
looks a lot like mesas in the western region
of the United States. In fact, it looks
a lot like other mesas in that same region
on Mars – similar in size, dimension, and
height. It’s an ordinary feature on Mars,
not a gargantuan piece of artwork left
to make us ponder whether alien artists
had visited Mars and sculpted on a
grand scale.
Don’t ask students to “believe” in science.
Provide the evidence, and allow
them to critically consider what we now
know about the Face. Give them the
same opportunity granted the space scientists
who analyzed the images taken
by cameras on orbiting spacecraft.
Finally, ask your students how much
money people made and continue to
make from selling pseudoscientific books
and films to the gullible public. That discussion
might reveal why the Face on
Mars is so persistent. Caveat emptor.
DeVore is the SETI Institute’s Director
of Education and Outreach
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14 SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008

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SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008 15

Northern Wisconsin As t r o n o m y: A Fa m ily Af fa i r
by Earl Finkler, TeamSETI member
Astronomy can be kind of a
cold, lonely activity –staying
up outdoors into the early
morning –looking for a faint
planet or star, or an especially
clear view of Mars. But Saturday
night, August 23 was very special: it was
a warm summer night in Medford, Wisconsin
and I had some great companions.
My trusty Unitron 2.4-inch refractor
telescope had been working well in the
warmth, and early in the day I told my
wife Chris that I was going star gazing
around sunset if the sky remained clear.
She offered all kinds of support, promising
to bring our two huskies out to provide
company, not to mention a chicken
dinner. Even better, she brought along
a box of homemade chocolate cookies
– just about the best thing for a night of
stargazing.
Chris has always been supportive of my
astronomy efforts, even on very chilly
nights in my former home, Barrow,
Alaska. I’ll always remember the winter
night when amateur astronomer Craig
George and I spread out in the snow and
looked up at Comet Hale Bopp. Soon
Chris came out and brought us some hot
chocolate. Great at 25 below.
I hauled the Unitron over to a small
neighborhood park, and got it set up.
Chris and the dogs showed up as it
turned dark. The mighty planet Jupiter
was bright at sunset and it got a whole
lot brighter as time went on. I swung
the Unitron its way and got a spectacular
view: even in my relatively small scope, it
was easy to see the disc and atmospheric
bands, as well as its four inner moons,
two on each side.
Chris came for a look and was equally
amazed.
“What’s next?” she asked. I swung the
scope toward the Big Dipper. “Let’s look
at the second star in from the edge of
Earl Finkler and husky Nuna checking out the Unitron telescope prior to a warm summer
night of sky watching in Wisconsin. [Photo: Chris Finkler]
the handle,” I said. “It’s really a double
star.”
It was the star Mizar, but I didn’t have my
diagonal attachment along, so looking
at something that high in the sky meant
that Chris and I had to almost lie on the
ground and look up into the eyepiece. I
was having trouble even finding that star
in my wide-angle finder. But Chris was
able to bend down and swing the big
Unitron directly to Mizar.
We could both see Mizar and its companion
Alcor. “Amateur astronomers
like to do that sometimes,” I explained
to Chris, “split a double star with their
telescope.”
We also checked out a bright object
about halfway between Jupiter and the
Big Dipper. Possibly Venus, which sets
pretty early, or even Mars But it did not
seem to have a red color. “I’m going
to check further on that when we get
home,” I said.
Chris and I managed to get up from our
cramped position at the bottom of the
scope. We pulled out a flashlight, found
the dogs and all our stuff and headed
home. Not a great many objects to see
this fine night in Wisconsin, but the warm
weather and good company made it an
astronomy night we won’t soon forget.
Finkler is a long-standing TeamSETI
member, and a former resident (and
radio personality) in Barrow, Alaska
16 SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008

Bo a r d o f Trustees
Are We Alone?
Science Radio for Thinking Species
Photo credit: Seth Shostak
Searching for life as we don’t know it begins with understanding life as we do.
From amoebas to zebras, from androids to antimatter, Are We Alone?
explores the science that makes life possible.
This weekly hour-long radio program features top scientists
talking about the latest in genetics, paleontology, technology,
physics, and evolutionary biology - as well as cosmology and
astronomy. Find out how to extract DNA from a banana, what
size wrench you need to build a time machine, and whether
dark energy can be bottled (yes).
If you’re a doubting Thomas, you’ll have plenty of company
when we separate science from pseudoscience on “Skeptical
Sunday” each month. Hear from people who investigate alien
abduction, psychics, ghosts, or the Shroud of Turin, and find
out how they sort out the facts from the phony. It’s the world
of skepticism. But don’t take our word for it ...
Are We Alone? is produced by the SETI Institute. It is podcast
every week and can be found via iTunes, Juice, and other
podcast sites. Current and past shows are also available for
immediate download and listening in both Windows Media
(.wma) and .mp3 formats on http://radio.seti.org. The show is
available to radio stations for broadcast from the Public Radio
Satellite System (PRSS) and the Public Radio Exchange (PRX)
services. To check if a station in your area is broadcasting the
show, visit http://radio.seti.org/listening-options.php
For more information about the show, or how you
can help get it on more radio stations, email us at
arewealone@seti.org, or call 650-960-4531.
Original music provided by Bruce Lebovitz. Are We Alone? is
supported in part by a grant from the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
“Skeptical Sunday” is funded with a generous donation
from the Trimberger Family Foundation.
SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008 17

SETI & SOCIETY Do u g l a s Va k o c h
St i tc h i n g Together a Ma r t i a n Me s s a g e
Though we typically think of SETI as attempting contact
with the denizens of other star systems, our
modern-day search had precursors – at least at the
level of theory – as far back as the early nineteenth
century. At that time, long before the kinetic theory
of gases had proven that the moon was too small to sustain a
substantial atmosphere, serious scientists thought that Earth’s
only natural satellite might well be a habitable abode. But
even if these scientists had been right, and the moon were
populated, how would Earthlings have made meaningful contact
with lunar extraterrestrials long before the Apollo era?
Nineteenth-century scientists seeking signs of intelligence beyond
Earth proposed a strategy still used by SETI scientists today:
start with the closest plausible targets. While that means
looking at stars in our galactic neighborhood for our twentyfirst
century searches, at the dawn of the nineteenth century
the neighborhood seemed much smaller. No less a mathematician
than Karl Friedrich Gauss is said to have developed a
scheme for letting Lunarians know that Earth was the home of
ambitious engineers. Because the moon is so close to the Earth,
Gauss reasoned, Selenites (another name for Moonfolk) would
be able to see large-scale landscaping on the Earth’s surface.
Gauss’s favored topic of conversation with the Lunarians, in
keeping with his profession, was mathematics. He suggested
chopping down vast expanses of Siberian forest, then planting
fields of wheat in their place – all according to the precise
formulations of the Pythagorean theorem. The beauty of this
plan, had there actually been any intelligent life on the moon,
is that such gargantuan diagrams could be seen directly with
a modest telescope, or perhaps even with the naked eye, depending
on how ambitious the Russian lumberjacks were.
Changing Probabilities
As the decades passed, and it became increasingly clear that the
moon was an inhospitable place, scientists looking for signs of
intelligent life shifted their attention to Mars. One such seeker
was Sir Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, who
was eminent in his own right as one of the founders of modern
statistics. Prompted by the opposition of Mars – the point
18 SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008

when the Earth and Mars are closest to one another as they
orbit the Sun – Galton pondered how we might communicate
with any beings on the Red Planet. In particular, he wanted
to demonstrate how we could convey information to these
beings, even if the Martians were too far away to see designs
sketched on the surface of the Earth.
Like many innovators, Galton combined ideas from several different
settings when tackling a new problem. For example,
Galton’s scheme for communicating with Martians was in large
part inspired by his study of visual perception, combined with
enhanced capabilities of then-new communication technologies.
In a lecture he delivered in 1893, Galton demonstrated
how one could create images by tracing the outlines of object
in a manner reminiscent of a “dot-to-dot” puzzle. But better
than simply casually connecting
the dots, he said
one could describe the precise
path from one dot to
the next simply by measuring
the length and angle
between the dots.
“At first sight it may seem
to be a silly waste of time
and trouble to translate a
drawing into a formula,”
Galton said, “but further
reflection shows that the
process may be of much
practical utility.”
Francis Galton
At the time, he was imagining using this technique to communicate
pictures using a telegraph for terrestrial-bound audiences:
“Important local events frequently occur in far-off regions
of which no description can give an exact idea without
the help of pictorial illustration; some catastrophe, or site of
a battle,or an exploration, or it may be some design or even
some portrait. There is therefore reason to expect a demand
for such drawings as these by telegraph …”
A Ray of Hope
Ideas similar to those proposed in the nineteenth century were
independently espoused by scientists and engineers working
in the 1960s on what had become proposals for interstellar (as
opposed to interplanetary) communication. With diminished
estimates of the likelihood of intelligent civilizations elsewhere
in our Solar System, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
moved to other stars. For example, early SETI pioneer Bernard
M. Oliver constructed a hypothetical interstellar message as a
two-dimensional array, which could be sent as a string of dots
and dashes. Using Oliver’s scheme, there would be no need for
the recipients to understand the angle and length of the lines
used to picture objects, as long as they recognized the pulses
could be lined up in a series of rows, one on top of the other.
In fact, one of Galton’s ideas even made it onboard the Voyager
interstellar recording. If we want to let Martians know how
we see, Galton explained, we need to explain the concept of
color. By sketching a diagram of white light traveling through a
prism, then separating into the colors of the spectrum, Galton
anticipated the Voyager image that provided a clue to interpreting
the handful of color photos included in that recording.
Even though there is no guarantee the recipients will be
capable of interpreting these messages clearly enough to gain
deep insights into the senders, the symbolism of including an
artificial rainbow is fitting, given our hope that someday we
may make contact with beings from another world.
Vakoch’s work is supported through the Adopt A Scientist
program by Jamie Baswell. Vakoch is Director of
Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute.
By 1896 Galton had adapted his system for signaling by “dots
and dashes” of precise durations with beings on Mars, or even
beyond, as suggested by the title of his paper: “Intelligible Signals
between Neighbouring Stars.” He compared this interplanetary
“picture-writing” to embroidery in which each stitch
composing the outline of an object would be defined in terms
of its length and direction. Unlike Gauss’s plan, where the notion
that a 2 + b 2 = c 2 is laid out for the viewer to see directly,
Galton’s scheme depends on the recipients being able to crack
the code of the message’s format.
Photo credit: Seth Shostak
SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008 19

Car l Sa g a n Ce n t e r
Protecting Ma r s f r o m Ea r t h l i n g s, a n d Vi c e Ve r s a
by Margaret Race
For nearly 20 years, a succession of SETI researchers
has been involved in the field of planetary protection
– pondering the science, technology and policy issues
associated with research and space exploration missions.
This coming February, the SETI Institute will host a special workshop
to develop an Astrobiology Roadmap of Societal Issues.
Funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s director’s office,
the three-day workshop will examine the broad range of nonscience
issues that are associated with the field of astrobiology.
What would it mean if we discover extraterrestrial life? What
ethical or theological questions, if any, would be raised by finding
martian microbes? What considerations should apply to
the environmental management of other planetary bodies?
What legal or policy questions might be raised by private sector
missions, and who should be involved if regulatory guidelines
need to be developed?
While the questions may seem farfetched to the armchair adventurer,
they are serious considerations for NASA and other
space agencies. For over four decades, the U.N. Outer Space
Treaty has guided spacefaring nations in their exploration of
the Solar System. The Treaty, passed in 1967, requires that
outer space missions be conducted in ways that prevent harmful
contamination to other planets and celestial bodies, and
avoid adverse changes to Earth that might be caused by the
introduction of extraterrestrial matter.
These planetary protection concerns focus on both forward
contamination, and back contamination, respectively, the
transport of hitchhiker microbes or biological contaminants
on spacecraft and equipment launched from Earth, and the
return to Earth of extraterrestrial microbes or materials that
could be hazardous to our planet and its biota. Even though
we are uncertain whether extraterrestrial life might exist in locations
where spacecraft visit, planetary protection policy takes
a deliberately conservative approach, aiming to ensure that the
very act of exploring such locations does not disrupt environments
and possible life elsewhere, or cause adverse effects on
Earth upon return
All of the Time
Forward and back contamination controls are a way of life for
all NASA missions. In fact, the informal motto of the NASA
Planetary Protection Office is “All of the Planets, All of the
Time.” Every proposed mission is assigned to a planetary protection
category that stipulates how much special cleaning,
Photo credit: NASA
An artist’s impression of a NASA Mars sample return mission.
sterilization, and microbial monitoring must be done to safeguard
all phases of the mission. These categories have been
designated by the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR),
the international scientific body responsible for setting planetary
protection policies based on the Outer Space Treaty.
The five categories currently in use are based on concerns about
biological potential – the likelihood that a body could harbor
life, now or in the past – as well as its importance to scientific
studies on the origin of life and its chemical evolution. In general,
outbound spacecraft are treated prior to launch to reduce
the bioload or number of ‘hitchhiker’ microbes that could be
transported from Earth. Sample return missions from bodies
with biological potential require additional strict controls and
quarantine to safeguard Earth from potentially biohazardous
materials that might be returned with samples.
Not all missions require planetary protection (PP) controls. For
example, missions to the Moon and some asteroids, which
have no direct interest for studies of life or chemical evolution,
are designated as Category I, and have no special PP requirements.
Missions to bodies like Mars or Europa, which have
indications of liquid water and conditions amenable to life, are
assigned to Category III or IV, and have increasingly stringent
20 SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008

Car l Sa g a n Ce n t e r
Photo credit: Seth Shostak
Margaret Race, with the landscape of Mars in the background.
requirements to minimize the possibility of contamination from
visiting spacecraft. Sample return missions from Mars or other
bodies with biological potential (e.g., Europa) are assigned to
Category V, and require additional controls and quarantine to
safeguard Earth from potentially biohazardous materials that
might be returned.
Over the years, the types and stringency of planetary protection
requirements have been modified to reflect changes in our
scientific understanding about both planetary environments
and microbes. At this point, it appears increasingly likely that
there are extraterrestrial environments and conditions that
could support Earth organisms delivered by spacecraft. Just as
important, there may be environments in the solar system that
support their own indigenous biota. The possible discovery of
a truly extraterrestrial life form during exploration has raised
greater concern about the implications of introducing Earth
microbes on arriving spacecraft; it has also raised questions
about the meaning of truly extraterrestrial life and the associated
ethical implications.
Ethical Considerations
In recognition of the increasing prospect for ET life and questions
about the effectiveness of standard planetary protection
controls, a 2006 report by the National Research Council
(NRC), Preventing the Forward Contamination of Mars, recommended
that NASA undertake a major overhaul of methods
and requirements for future missions to Mars. Already, many
of these changes are underway. The report also took an unusual
step, breaking new ground beyond the typical science
and technology realms. It recommended that NASA reconsider
planetary protection policy itself to determine whether ethical
considerations should also be taken into account. Specifically,
the report recommended that NASA should work with COSPAR
and other institutions to organize an international workshop
“to consider whether biological planetary protection measures
and other current practices intending to preserve planetary environments
should be extended within a broader ethical and
practical framework.”
This unusual recommendation was accepted and approved by
NASA’s Planetary Protection Subcommittee in 2007 and subsequently
endorsed by COSPAR’s Planetary Protection Panel
in early 2008. In summer 2008, the recommendation was officially
approved by the COSPAR Bureau at its international Assembly
in Montreal.
To be sure, changes to treaty-based policies don’t occur very
often, nor do they happen overnight. As NASA and other
space faring entities take increasingly bold steps into the next
50 years of exploration, it’s exciting to think about the potential
discoveries and far-reaching human activities ahead. It’s
also reassuring to know that we are pausing together with
the international community to consider the broad societal implications
of our activities on planetary environments and life
itself – both here and beyond. Clearly, it takes more than just
rocket scientists to plan the path forward.
Race is a Principal Investigator at the SETI Institute
SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008 21

Cen t e r fo r Ed u c at i o n & Pu b l i c Ou t r e a c h
From left to right, top row: Elena Amador, Yvette Cendes, Matthew Finch, Robert Jacobsen, Matthew Levit, Rosie Malsberger;
middle row: Alicia Muirhead, Zachary Nadler, Manuel Olmedo, Efrosini Proios, Danica Roth, Aaron Slodov;
bottom row: Heather Stewart, William Swearson, Claire Webb, Kimberley Wendell, Shicong Xie
2008 Summer
Students
by Cynthia Phillips
The 2008 Research Experience for Undergraduates
program in astrobiology at the SETI Institute recently
concluded, and once again was a great success for
the students and scientists involved.
The program brings college undergraduates
from around the country to the Institute for 10 weeks
over the summer. The students live in dorms at NASA
Ames Research Center, and work closely with mentor
scientists either at the SETI Institute or at NASA
Ames. The students all participate in a week-long
field trip to northern California, where they live in
dorms at the Hat Creek Radio Astronomy Observatory
and get to use the Allen Telescope Array. This portion of
the field trip is led by Jill Tarter. The students also spend two
days at Lassen Volcanic National Park studying extremophiles
and geology, an expedition organized by Rocco Mancinelli.
Other field trips throughout the summer include a trip to Lick
Observatory led by Frank Drake, and a Perseid meteor shower
observing trip to Fremont Peak Observatory led by Peter Jenniskens.
Students attend lectures on topics in astrobiology
throughout the summer, and give final presentation talks on
their research projects. As selected by their mentors, some
students will submit their results for presentation at national
conferences such as the American Geophysical Union meeting,
the American Astronomical Society meeting, and the Lunar
and Planetary Science Conference.
The REU program is funded by a grant from the National Science
Foundation, with supplementary funding from the
NASA Astrobiology Institute, the NASA Education and
Public Outreach Supplemental Grants Program, and
the SETI Institute. The Principal Investigator of the
program is Cynthia Phillips, with the assistance of
Edna DeVore, Sue Lehr, Cynthia Ramseyer, and the
many other staff members and scientists at the SETI
Institute who participate.
The 17 student participants in the 2008 REU program came
from around the country, from as close as Palo Alto to as far
as New York. We had students from North Dakota, Montana,
Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and California.
22 SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008

Cen t e r fo r Ed u c at i o n & Pu b l i c Ou t r e a c h
Of the 17 students, 10 were female, 3
were Hispanic, and 2 were Asian. We
have applied for a renewal of the REU
grant, and hope to offer the SETI Institute
Astrobiology REU program again
in 2009. Keep an eye on the website
at http://www.seti.org/reu for more details!
Read on to see the 2008 REU students
in action, and find out more about
their backgrounds and projects.
Elena Amador
Earth Science with concentration in
Planetary Science, UC Santa Cruz, California.
Mentor: Janice Bishop
Elena worked with Janice Bishop doing
mineralogical research in Mawrth Vallis,
Mars, using CRISM images and making
laboratory mixtures.
Yvette Cendes
Physics B.S., Case Western Reserve Univ,
Ohio
Mentor: Jill Tarter
Yvette worked to determine whether
stray signals from the control room
computers and processors at the Allen
Telescope Array are detected by the telescopes
themselves
Matthew Finch
Chemistry, College of San Mateo, California
Mentor: Richard Quinn, Cindy Taylor
Matthew used electrochemical methods
to characterize and identify signals pertinent
to the Phoenix Mars Lander MECA-
WCL data
Robert Jacobsen
Geology, Colorado College, Colorado
Mentor: Devon Burr
Robert mapped features on Saturn’s
moon Titan created by the flow of liquid
methane
Matthew Levit
Biology, La Salle University, Pennsylvania
Mentors: Scott Sandford, Stephanie Milam
Matt worked on the synthesis of nucleobases,
the building blocks of DNA/RNA,
from the ultraviolet photolysis of astrophysically
relevant ice mixtures at the
NASA Ames astrochemistry laboratory.
Rosie Malsberger
Physics, Grinnell College, Iowa
Mentor: Jean Chiar
Rosie worked with data from the Spitzer
Space Telescope to study a 6.2 micron
hydrocarbon absorption feature from
potential intergalactic stellar sources
Alicia Muirhead
Earth Sciences, UC Santa Cruz, California
Mentor: Janice Bishop
Alicia used MRO CRISM data and lab
work to better understand the presence
of iron oxides on Mars
Zachary Nadler
Physics/Mathematics, Emory University,
Georgia
Mentor: Gerry Harp
Zach used holography to characterize
the dishes of the Allen Telescope Array
Manuel Olmedo
Physics, UC Santa Barbara, California
Mentor: Alessandra Ricca
Manuel assisted in a study of photo-irradiated
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
(PAHs) in mixed molecular ice.
Efrosini Proios
Molecular and Cell Biology, College of
San Mateo, California
Mentor: Rocco Mancinelli
Efrosini studied the effect of potassium
chloride on the resistance of halophilic
DNA to UV light
Danica Roth
Astrophysics/Physics double major, UC
Berkeley, California
Mentor: Cynthia Phillips
Danica studied the mapping and morphology
of Titan’s channels
Aaron Slodov
Physics/Math, Kent State University,
Ohio
Mentor: Peter Backus
Aaron developed a new habitable star
catalog for expanded SETI searches
Heather Stewart
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Villanova
University, Pennsylvania
Mentor: Josh Emery, Franck Marchis
Heather analyzed IR data from the Spitzer
Space Telescope on Trojan asteroids in
conjunction with observing and reducing
light curves for Trojan, main belt, binary,
and near-Earth asteroids
William Swearson
Anthropology, University of North Dakota
Mentor: Hector D’Antoni, Jay Skiles
Project Description: Used South America
as an analog to hindcast climate change
Claire Webb
Astronomy, Vassar College, New York
Mentor: Peter Jenniskens
Claire worked on a novel application of
tungsten halogen light sources for the
calibration of STARDUST sample return
capsule entry observations
Kimberley Wendell
Geology, Paleontology, and Spanish,
Montana State University
Mentor: Devon Burr
Kim studied sinuous ridges on Mars
(possible inverted fluvial channels), and
calculated the paleodischarge, in order
to better understand past climate conditions
on that planet
Shicong Xie
Major: Physics, UC Berkeley, California
Mentor: Friedemann Freund
Shicong investigated the effect of the
physical chemistry of rocks on the oxidation
of water
SETI Institute Explorer | Fourth Quarter 2008 23

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Image: NASA
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