Is the banality of ordinary television programming getting you down? Why not try tuning in to signals from an extraterrestrial civilization with your backyard satellite TV dish? When the US Congress cut off funding for NASA's search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, in 1993, professional researchers scrambled for private financing. The congressional move also led to the formation of the SETI League, a group of amateur radio astronomers headquartered in Little Ferry, New Jersey. Executive director H. Paul Shuch often livens league meetings with a song: "My satellite antenna is pointed at the sky / But I'm not watching television, let me tell you why / I'm searching for existence - proof of any alien race / By sifting through the microwaves that fall from outer space."
Using a standard backyard satellite TV dish, a microwave receiver, a pre-amplifier, and a computer, Shuch has been scanning the cosmos for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. A professor of electronics at the Pennsylvania College of Technology (part of Penn State), he has taken a leave of absence to head the SETI League.
"For about US$2,000, you can build yourself a really good SETI station," Shuch says. "You can pick up MTV at the same time you listen for extraterrestrial intelligence, because the signals don't interfere with one another - you just stick a second feed horn onto your dish.
The SETI League's grand goal is to develop Project Argus, its coordinated search, into a worldwide network of 5,000 dishes that will scan the sky for alien beacons arriving from as far out as 200 light-years. With 387 members in 17 countries, the league has 24 stations online or under construction.
One station is operated by Rachel Tortolini, a family practice physician in Oahu, Hawaii. "I was just looking for a hobby to take my mind off medicine," she says. "I mostly buy surplus. I picked up a 10-meter diameter dish at scrap metal prices." Tortolini says, "The dishes remind me of big flowers pointing their petals to the skies, waiting to receive whatever's out there. There's nothing between my dish and the end of the universe."
