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The SETI Institute's Project Phoenix
posted: 05:07 pm ET
03 October 2000
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Project Phoenix is the world's most sensitive and comprehensive search for extraterrestrial intelligenceProject Phoenix is the code word for the SETI Institute's current search for extraterrestrial life activities. The project seeks to detect extraterrestrial civilizations by listening for radio signals that are either being deliberately beamed our way, or are inadvertently transmitted from another planet. Privately funded, Project Phoenix began making observations with the Parkes 210-foot (64-meter) radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia. This is the largest radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. From September 1996 through April 1998, the project used a 140-foot (42.7 meter) telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. The Green Bank antenna was shared with other astronomers. To date, no clearly extraterrestrial transmissions have been found. Project Phoenix doesn't scan the whole sky. Rather, it scrutinizes the vicinities of some 1,000 nearby, Sun-like stars. Such stars are most likely to host long-lived planets capable of supporting life, experts say, and some of the regions now being searched are known to contain planets. All the target stars are within 200 light-years of Earth. Because millions of radio channels are simultaneously monitored by Phoenix, most of the "listening" is done by computers. Nonetheless, astronomers are required to make critical decisions about signals that look intriguing. Phoenix looks for signals between 1,000 and 3,000 megahertz (MHz). Signals found at only one spot on the radio dial (narrow-band signals) are the "signature" of an intelligent transmission. The spectrum searched by Phoenix is broken into very narrow 1-Hz-wide channels, so 2 billion channels are examined for each target star. Observations are currently being made during two three-week sessions each year using the 1,000-foot (305 meter) radio telescope at Arecibo in Puerto Rico. During the observing sessions, the astronomers on duty post reports. By mid 1999, Project Phoenix had examined about half of the stars on its "hit list." Phoenix is the successor to a NASA SETI program canceled by Congress in 1993. Related links:
In-depth look at SETI history
Project Phoenix Staff
About Arecibo
SETI Science
Latest SETI News: Return to headlines
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