(CNN) -- From a remote valley in Northern California, Jill Tarter is listening to the universe.
Jill Tarter at the Allen Telescope Array in California, which monitors radio signals for signs of alien life. Her ears are 42 large and sophisticated radio telescopes, spread across several acres, that scan the cosmos for signals of extraterrestrial origin. If intelligent life forms do exist on other planets, and they try to contact us, Tarter will be among the first to know. Are we citizens of Earth alone in the universe? It's a question that has long fascinated astronomers, sci-fi authors, kids with backyard telescopes and Hollywood executives who churn out spectacles about alien encounters. Polls have found that most Americans believe that some form of life exists beyond our planet. "It's a fundamental question," said Tarter, the real-life inspiration for Jodie Foster's character in the 1997 movie "Contact." "And it's a question that the person on the street can understand. It's not like a ... super-collider or some search for neutrinos buried in the ice. It's, 'Are we alone? How might we find out? What does that tell us about ourselves and our place in the universe?' "We're trying to figure out how the universe began, how galaxies and large-scale structures formed, and where did the origins of life as we know it take place?" Tarter said. "These are all valid questions to ask of the universe. And an equally valid question is whether the same thing that happened here [on Earth] has happened elsewhere." Watch a preview of CNN's "In Search of Aliens" series Thanks to advancements in technology, scientists hope to get an answer sooner rather than later. Rovers have snapped photographs of the surface of Mars that show fossil-like shapes. NASA hopes to launch within a decade a Terrestrial Planet Finder, an orbiting observatory that would detect planets around nearby stars and determine whether they could support life. "In Search of Aliens" Watch Miles O'Brien's five-part series on aliens and UFOs, every day this week on CNN's "American Morning" 6 to 9 a.m. ET Such developments are catnip to scientists like Geoffrey Marcy, a professor of astronomy at the University of California-Berkeley who has discovered more extrasolar planets than anyone else. "It wasn't more than 13 years ago that we hadn't found any planets around the stars, and most people thought that we never would. So here we are not only having found planets, we are looking for habitable planets, signs of biology on those planets," Marcy told CNN. "It's an extraordinary explosion of a field of science that didn't even exist just a few years ago." Then there's Tarter, whose quest for signs of extraterrestrial life kept her on the fringes of mainstream science for decades. While pursuing her doctorate at UC-Berkeley, Tarter came across an engineering report that floated the idea of using radio telescopes to listen for broadcasts by alien beings. It became her life's work. In 1984 Tarter founded the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) in California. Using telescopes in Australia, West Virginia and Puerto Rico, she conducted a decade-long scouring of about 750 nearby star systems for extraterrestrial radio signals. None was found, although Tarter had some false alarms. In 1998, she intercepted a mysterious signal that lasted for hours. Tarter got so excited she misread her own computer results: The signal was coming from a NASA observatory spacecraft orbiting the sun. Today, Tarter listens to the heavens with the Allen Telescope Array, a collection of 20-foot-wide telescopes some 300 miles north of San Francisco. The dish-like scopes are a joint effort of SETI and UC-Berkeley's Radio Astronomy Lab and have been funded largely by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who donated more than $25 million to the project. Unlike previously existing radio telescopes, which scan the sky for limited periods of time, the Allen Telescope Array probes the universe round the clock. Each of the 42 scopes is aimed at a different area of the sky, collecting reams of data that are continually studied by computers for unusual patterns. Then the listeners must filter out noise from airplanes and satellites. "We're listening for something that we don't think can be produced by Mother Nature," Tarter said. "We're using the radio frequency, other people are using optical telescopes ... and in both cases we're looking for an artificial nature to a signal. "In the case of radio, we're looking for a lot of power being squished into just one channel on the radio dial. In the optical, they're looking for very bright flashes that last a nanosecond ... or less, not slow pulsing kinds of things. To date we've never found a natural source that can do that." Signals that any extraterrestrials might be transmitting for their own use would be difficult to detect, Tarter said. Astronomers are more likely to discover a radio transmission broadcast intentionally at the Earth, she said. Astronomers at SETI, however, are not sending a signal into space in an attempt to communicate with aliens. University of California professor Marcy is skeptical about the existence of intelligent alien life and believes our galaxy's vast distances would make communication between Earth and beings on other planets almost impossible. "The nearest neighbor might be halfway across our galaxy, 50,000 light-years away. Communicating with them will take a hundred thousand years for a round-trip signal," he said. Still, Tarter remains undaunted. The Allen Telescope Array already does in 10 minutes what once took her scientists 10 days. When the project is completed, it will have 350 telescopes that, combined, can survey tens of thousands of star systems. "We can look in more places and more frequencies faster than we ever could. And that will just get better with time. We're doing something now we couldn't do when we started, we couldn't do five years ago," she said. "Think of it as a cosmic haystack. There's a needle in there somewhere. If you pull out a few straws, are you going to get disappointed because you haven't found the needle yet? No. We haven't really begun to explore." CNN correspondent Miles O'Brien contributed to this story. 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Smoke rises above a damaged building following a U.S.-led coalition airstrike against ISIS positions during a military operation to regain control of the eastern suburbs of Ramadi, Iraq, on Saturday, August 15. The ISIS terror threat Iraqi men look at the damage following a bomb explosion that targeted a vegetable market in Baghdad's northern Shiite district of Sadr City on Thursday, August 13. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. The ISIS terror threat An ISIS fighter poses with spoils purportedly taken after capturing the Syrian town. The ISIS terror threat Smoke rises as Iraqi security forces bomb ISIS positions in the eastern suburbs of Ramadi, Iraq, on August 6. The city fell in May to ISIS, a militant group that wants to create an Islamic state across Sunni areas of Iraq and Syria. ISIS has also claimed responsibility for attacks in other countries in the Middle East. The ISIS terror threat Buildings reduced to piles of debris can be seen in the eastern suburbs of Ramadi on August 6. The ISIS terror threat Saudi officials and investigators check the inside of the mosque on August 6. The ISIS terror threat Protesters in Istanbul carry anti-ISIS banners and flags to show support for victims of the Suruc suicide blast during a demonstration on Monday, July 20. The ISIS terror threat Syrians wait near the Turkish border during clashes between ISIS and Kurdish armed groups in Kobani, Syria, on Thursday, June 25. The photo was taken in Sanliurfa, Turkey. ISIS militants disguised as Kurdish security forces infiltrated Kobani on Thursday and killed "many civilians," said a spokesman for the Kurds in Kobani. The ISIS terror threat Residents examine a damaged mosque after an Iraqi Air Force bombing in the ISIS-seized city of Falluja, Iraq, on Sunday, May 31. At least six were killed and nine others wounded during the bombing. The ISIS terror threat Iraqi soldiers fire their weapons toward ISIS group positions in the Garma district, west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, on Sunday, April 26. Pro-government forces said they had recently made advances on areas held by Islamist jihadists. The ISIS terror threat A member of Afghanistan's security forces stands at the site where a suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up in front of the Kabul Bank in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, on Saturday, April 18. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. The explosion killed at least 33 people and injured more than 100 others, a public health spokesman said. The ISIS terror threat Iraqi counterterrorism forces patrol in Ramadi on April 18. The ISIS terror threat Thousands of Iraqis cross a bridge over the Euphrates River to Baghdad as they flee Ramadi on Friday, April 17. The ISIS terror threat Kurdish Peshmerga forces help Yazidis as they arrive at a medical center in Altun Kupri, Iraq, on April 8. The ISIS terror threat A Yazidi woman mourns for the death of her husband and children by ISIS after being released south of Kirkuk on April 8. The ISIS terror threat People in Tikrit inspect what used to be a palace of former President Saddam Hussein on April 3. The ISIS terror threat On April 1, Shiite militiamen celebrate the retaking of Tikrit, which had been under ISIS control since June. The push into Tikrit came days after U.S.-led airstrikes targeted ISIS bases around the city. The ISIS terror threat Iraqi security forces launch a rocket against ISIS positions in Tikrit on Monday, March 30. The ISIS terror threat Iraqi Shiite fighters cover their ears as a rocket is launched during a clash with ISIS militants in the town of Al-Alam, Iraq, on Monday, March 9. The ISIS terror threat Displaced Assyrian women who fled their homes due to ISIS attacks pray at a church on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, on Sunday, March 1. ISIS militants abducted at least 220 Assyrians in Syria. The ISIS terror threat A Kurdish marksman looks over a destroyed area of Kobani on Friday, January 30, after the city had been liberated from the ISIS militant group. The Syrian city, also known as Ayn al-Arab, had been under assault by ISIS since mid-September. The ISIS terror threat Kurdish people celebrate in Suruc, Turkey, near the Turkish-Syrian border, after ISIS militants were expelled from Kobani on Tuesday, January 27. The ISIS terror threat Collapsed buildings are seen in Kobani on January 27 after Kurdish forces took control of the town from ISIS. The ISIS terror threat Junko Ishido, mother of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, reacts during a news conference in Tokyo on Friday, January 23. ISIS would later kill Goto and another Japanese hostage, Haruna Yukawa. The ISIS terror threat ISIS militants are seen through a rifle's scope during clashes with Peshmerga fighters in Mosul, Iraq, on Wednesday, January 21. The ISIS terror threat An elderly Yazidi man arrives in Kirkuk after being released by ISIS on Saturday, January 17. The militant group released about 200 Yazidis who were held captive for five months in Iraq. Almost all of the freed prisoners were in poor health and bore signs of abuse and neglect, Kurdish officials said. The ISIS terror threat Smoke billows behind an ISIS sign during an Iraqi military operation to regain control of the town of Sadiyah, about 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, on Tuesday, November 25. The ISIS terror threat Fighters from the Free Syrian Army and the Kurdish People's Protection Units join forces to fight ISIS in Kobani on Wednesday, November 19. The ISIS terror threat A picture taken from Turkey shows smoke rising after ISIS militants fired mortar shells toward an area controlled by Syrian Kurdish fighters near Kobani on Monday, November 3. The ISIS terror threat Iraqi special forces search a house in Jurf al-Sakhar, Iraq, on Thursday, October 30, after retaking the area from ISIS. The ISIS terror threat ISIS militants stand near the site of an airstrike near the Turkey-Syria border on Thursday, October 23. The United States and several Arab nations have been bombing ISIS targets in Syria to take out the militant group's ability to command, train and resupply its fighters. The ISIS terror threat Kurdish fighters walk to positions as they combat ISIS forces in Kobani on Sunday, October 19. The ISIS terror threat Heavy smoke rises in Kobani following an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition on October 18. The ISIS terror threat Cundi Minaz, a female Kurdish fighter, is buried in a cemetery in the southeastern Turkish town of Suruc on Tuesday, October 14. Minaz was reportedly killed during clashes with ISIS militants in nearby Kobani. The ISIS terror threat Kiymet Ergun, a Syrian Kurd, celebrates in Mursitpinar, Turkey, after an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in Kobani on Monday, October 13. The ISIS terror threat Alleged ISIS militants stand next to an ISIS flag atop a hill in Kobani on Monday, October 6. The ISIS terror threat A Kurdish Peshmerga soldier who was wounded in a battle with ISIS is wheeled to the Zakho Emergency Hospital in Duhuk, Iraq, on Tuesday, September 30. The ISIS terror threat Syrian Kurds wait near a border crossing in Suruc as they wait to return to their homes in Kobani on Sunday, September 28. The ISIS terror threat A elderly man is carried after crossing the Syria-Turkey border near Suruc on Saturday, September 20. The ISIS terror threat A Kurdish Peshmerga fighter launches mortar shells toward ISIS militants in Zumar, Iraq, on Monday, September 15. The ISIS terror threat Kurdish Peshmerga fighters fire at ISIS militant positions from their position on the top of Mount Zardak, east of Mosul, Iraq, on Tuesday, September 9. The ISIS terror threat Displaced Iraqis receive clothes from a charity at a refugee camp near Feeshkhabour, Iraq, on Tuesday, August 19. The ISIS terror threat Aziza Hamid, a 15-year-old Iraqi girl, cries for her father while she and some other Yazidi people are flown to safety Monday, August 11, after a dramatic rescue operation at Iraq's Mount Sinjar. A CNN crew was on the flight, which took diapers, milk, water and food to the site where as many as 70,000 people were trapped by ISIS. But only a few of them were able to fly back on the helicopter with the Iraqi Air Force and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. The ISIS terror threat Thousands of Yazidis are escorted to safety by Kurdish Peshmerga forces and a People's Protection Unit in Mosul on Saturday, August 9. The ISIS terror threat Thousands of Yazidi and Christian people flee Mosul on Wednesday, August 6, after the latest wave of ISIS advances. The ISIS terror threat A Baiji oil refinery burns after an alleged ISIS attack in northern Selahaddin, Iraq, on Thursday, July 31. The ISIS terror threat A Syrian rebel fighter lies on a stretcher at a makeshift hospital in Douma, Syria, on Wednesday, July 9. He was reportedly injured while fighting ISIS militants. The ISIS terror threat Children stand next to a burnt vehicle during clashes between Iraqi security forces and ISIS militants in Mosul on Tuesday, June 10. http://rss.cnn.com/c/35494/f/676999/s/497afd41/sc/14/l/0L0Scnn0N0C20A150C0A90C0A10Cpolitics0Cdavid0Epetraeus0Eal0Eqaeda0Eisis0Enusra0Cindex0Bhtml0Deref0Frss0Ius/story01.htm |
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