Project Phoenix is back at Arecibo, checking out nearbystars for signs of intelligent life. Astronomer Seth Shostak is reporting fromthe observatory once again, and SPACE.com will be home to his Arecibo Diaries.This is the final installment.
"If I start to snore,just throw something at me." Peter Backus, who manages the Project Phoenixobserving program, switches off the last of the lights in Bachelor Unit #1.
Its 3:30 am -- an earlynight. The terminology rumbles through my sleepy brain: "Bachelor Unit#1." Sounds like something out of Stalinist Russia, with an ambience tomatch. The teak and plywood Bachelor digs are like dorms at an all wood college,sporting a single bathroom, a small kitchen and a Formica plank that mightserve as a desk if youre desperate.
Life at the observatory isSpartan, but as the veterans like to brag, it used to be a lot rougher. Not solong ago, the only accommodations were the dorm-like garrets known as theVisiting Scientists Quarters. Bunk beds were standard issue. Its hard toimagine a quartet of guys living in those things for a few weeks withoutstarting World War 3.
In the mornings latemornings I stumble down the stairways to the cafeteria. The observatoryrecently constructed an outdoor dining area with high-grade, polished picnictables; a roof to keep your chicken from drowning in the event of a suddendownpour; and an overhead fan to discourage flies. Not that there are manyflies. The observatory is remarkably free of insects, a fact that the localsattribute to the living carpet of small frogs and lizards covering the hills.When it comes to a choice between insects and reptiles, I vote for thereptiles. Unlike the flies, lizards wont land on your beans.
Maggie Turnbull a gradstudent from the University of Arizona with bright eyes and an easy laugh isahead of me in line. Shes surveying the open, stainless steel tubs of food.Chicken. Beef. Turkey. Veggies tortured long past the point of confessing."Not much here if you dont like hot, dead animals," she says.
"Well, its meatweek," I offer.
"You mean, sometimesthey have just salad and veggies?"
"No, I think itsalways meat week."
| SETI@Arecibo Diaries |
| FIRST ENTRY: Sometimes I envy the folks who figure they can establish extraterrestrial contact by standing in the backyard waiting for spacecraft to land. After all, the required infrastructure is pretty simple: one count em, one backyard. READ MORE . |
SECOND ENTRY: This is their first trip to Arecibo, and theyre still gasping at the size of the antenna. "Awesomeness" has its rewards, because when SETI is your bread and butter, bigger is really better. READMORE . |
THIRD ENTRY: We get a lot of visitors to the control room, most of them excited by the prospect of seeing history in the making. READ MORE .
FOURTH ENTRY: The Arecibo dish is hardly the new "scope on the block, but it"s still cutting edge. READ MORE . |
Easy parody, but in factthe cafeteria has added a salad bar for those whose tastes run to chlorophyll.And to be fair, the appeal of the main courses has greatly improved. This haseliminated a convenient source of complaint, which like removing an escapevalve has probably heightened the stress level for visiting observers.
For those who insist ongrousing about the food, the final opportunity may be the quantity. A typicallunch is a groaning plate heaped with chicken, rice (required by law), beans,salad and a hunk of bread, lubricated with a liter of brown gravy. Now forthose observatory employees whove been laboring all day under the dish,tightening bolts or taming the underbrush, these ample rations are probablynecessary. We, on the other hand, have done nothing more strenuous thanoccasionally punch the "return" key.
Im hiking the 500 concretesteps to the observatorys snazzy Visitors Center. A recent addition is ascale model of the solar system, with a basketball-sized Sun at the start ofthe stairs and planets on metal poles all the way up. Ive seen this kind ofthing before; probably you have, too. But Im up the stairs about a hundredfeet, and theres Earth...a small really small blue-white bead, maybe 0.1 inch(3 millimeters) in size, behind a Plexiglas window. I look up the stairway toMars: an even smaller bead, 70 feet (21 meters) away.
The relative sizes anddistances of the universe are back-of-the-hand knowledge for every astronomer,and pretty much taken for granted. But Im stunned by the incredibly tiny sizeof this blue bead even in the relatively limited space of our own solar system.How miniscule and insignificant the planets are -- a few grains of sandwhirling through an amphitheater.
This, in the end, is whatSETI is all about. Somewhere, on an unknown, unseen bead many tens of thousandsof miles away (on this scale) there may be a bit of equipment making a signal.Were trying to find that? We are. Incredibly, we are.
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Something unexpectedly hitsme from behind. I reach around my head and grope in the dark. Why is it dark? Ifind a book, a softcover book.
"You weresnoring!"
"What?" I lookover to the next bed, and see the face of Peter Backus.
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