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March 3, 1999 - Art Bell

02:43:13

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Dr. Paul Shuch - SETI

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	Welcome to Arkbell, Somewhere in Time.
	Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from March 3rd, 1999.
	From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening or good morning as the case may be wherever you are in this great land of ours.
	From the Tahitian and Hawaiian Islands out west, eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S.
	Virgin Islands, Blanket commercial coverage, South into South America, North all the way to the Poland.
	Worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, and I'm Art Bell.
	And by the way, that worldwide on the Internet is thankyoubroadcast.com, and of course, with our new streaming video setup, Intel as well.
	What a combination.
	These people know what they're doing.
	It's getting better every single day, so if you have not yet Enjoyed the video feed.
	All you've got to do, it's all free.
	All free.
	You go to my website, download the G2 Player.
	Brand new G2 Player, it's free.
	You're going to love the software anyhow.
	Then you come back to my website, click on the streaming video, and there I will be.
	In one form or another.
	And it's almost TV.
	Almost TV.
	Anyway, in the next hour we're going to be interviewing A very, very, very interesting person.
	He is Dr. H. Paul Schock.
	And he heads the SETI League.
	And he's something of a cross between Carl Sagan and Tom Lehrer.
	He sings like Sagan and lectures like Lehrer, it says here.
	He's a really interesting guy.
	And the Doctor and I have a great deal in common.
	Going back to the early TVRO days, I was also in that business in the very early days.
	What does the SETI League do?
	Well, they do what SETI does.
	They're looking for anybody, somebody, an entity out there in that vastness.
	When you go outside and you look up at the night sky, and oh, it's some night sky out here in the desert, believe me, As Jodie Foster said in Contact, if there's not someone out there, it's a terrible waste of space.
	And it is.
	There's almost got to be somebody out there.
	There's got to be another race.
	There's got to be another civilization.
	And listening for it is as good an idea as any.
	Because at some stage, albeit perhaps even a small one, in any race's evolution, There would be a period of time one would imagine when they would discover electromagnetic energy, radio, television, microwave, all the things that we have here.
	And so it makes sense that we would look for them.
	And he looks for them.
	And it's even more interesting because he can involve you in looking for them.
	That'll be next hour.
	Right now, I would like to welcome a brand new affiliate.
	Actually, they're an affiliate that has been with us for some time now, and we just found out about them.
	They'd be affiliate number 431.
	They would be CHML in Hamilton, Ontario.
	990 on the dial in Hamilton, Ontario.
	And it's nice to know you guys are aboard.
	Now, they carry the first two hours of the program in Hamilton.
	Not exactly, where is Hamilton?
	That, um, probably, let's see, one, two, one, three, seven days, that's probably East, I would imagine.
	Hamilton's East, isn't it?
	I'm trying to become more familiar with Canadian geography, but I'm not, I'm not exactly sure about Hamilton.
	So, if you folks in Hamilton would like more hours, I would suggest you give, uh, CHML a call.
	And tell them you would enjoy hearing more of the program and perhaps that's something they can work out.
	Now, I saw in its entirety the Monica Lewinsky interview, as I know a gazillion of you must have out there.
	What were my impressions about this thing that has kept our nation locked up for how long now?
	A year?
	Seriously locked up for about a year?
	Has taken the attention of government?
	Has threatened a presidency?
	Has probably disturbed a personal life of the president?
	This sordid... I guess I ended up, at the end of watching the interview with Barbara Walters, just saying to myself, You mean to say this virtually crippled the government of the United States for a year?
	This sexual infatuation between the president and this intern crippled the nation for a year?
	We're idiots.
	Absolute idiots, in my opinion, to have allowed this to occur.
	Enamored, no doubt, with the salacious details of it all?
	And they were salacious, too.
	Monica Lewinsky, how do you comment on her?
	She seemed genuinely naive, without much of a sense of self-worth, and that's how she was led into all of this on the President's part, just one of many.
	But I tend in my mind to separate what the president does politically and what he does down the hall in the White House.
	Frankly, I have never cared that much.
	And now that I have seen Monica Lewinsky for two hours, interviewed by Barbara Walters, to use a phrase that is not proper though it fits, I could care less now.
	I think it's disgusting That a nation would allow itself to be drawn away from really important business for some stupid little sexual dalliance.
	It's just beyond all reason to me.
	So, you know, I watched it.
	I did as I should do, I suppose, and I watched the whole thing and I thought it was sickening.
	Again, my quote Every normal man, said H.L.
	Mencken, every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
	So that was my comment.
	I'm sure a lot of you have comments.
	A violence against women is helping to spread the virus that causes AIDS.
	It's according to the UN.
	Marital abuse, sexual coercion, rape, Trafficking of women and children in forms of violence that lead directly to HIV.
	All of that going on, and the World Health Organization and the UN say the whole thing is spreading AIDS.
	No surprise there.
	By the way, this is a little tip for all of you out there from a photographer in my audience, Kevin, who's got a good idea.
	He says, On last night's show, when you were discussing the UFO sighting in Nevada, in Laughlin, at the UFO conference, you asked those fellows if they had taken any pictures.
	They said no.
	And you agreed that photographing the night sky is indeed difficult.
	I've tried.
	It is.
	He goes on, I've been an amateur astronomer, astrophotographer for about 20 years, and I'll let you know how it can be done simply.
	Things you need before you begin.
	An SLR camera with a B, as in boy, setting.
	This lets you lock the shutter open for an amount of time.
	A good lens to have is the typical 50mm lens.
	Nothing special so far.
	2.
	A tripod.
	Because, of course, you cannot... There's no way that you can keep... hold the camera steady.
	3.
	A cable release.
	And 4.
	ASA 400 film.
	Set up the camera to the B setting.
	Set the lens on infinity.
	While opening the camera's aperture fully, Usually to the F1.6 setting, attach the cable release and set the camera on the tripod.
	Remember to remove the lens cover.
	That's very important.
	Aim the camera skyward.
	Depress the cable release.
	Some releases have an automatic lock, while others you must turn the little set screw.
	You are now shooting the sky.
	Leave the shutter open for a minimum of 12 seconds.
	That ought to be good enough to capture many stars.
	This is very interesting.
	You may leave the shutter open longer, but the stars may then trail or become streaks on the film.
	One rule of thumb is that the closer to the pole star you are shooting, the longer you can leave open the shutter and vice versa.
	Once you have the stars as points or even Smite ovals is acceptable.
	Any object such as a plane, satellite, meteor, or any other object will appear as a streak on the film.
	Being in a rural area, you should have no trouble recording many faint stars and objects.
	One thing, though, always keep a log of your photographs, such as what constellation you're pointed toward and how many seconds you're leaving the shutter open.
	This way, you'll know where you are And how to repeat your results once you have your prints or slides back.
	Hope this helps.
	Kevin.
	Kevin, it helps a lot, and I'm going to call those instructions and pass them to anybody who would be helped by them.
	I'm the first.
	Now, I've got a whole bunch of different kind of news for you right now.
	From the Associated Press, This is very interesting.
	Dateline St.
	Louis.
	Missouri and other parts of the Midwest were sprayed with fluorescent particles in the late 1950s under a secret Army biological weapons research program, according to the St.
	Louis Post-Dispatch Wednesday.
	Wednesday.
	Did you hear me?
	Sprayed.
	The newspaper said that the particles, zinc cadmium sulfide, ...are the same as those sprayed from St.
	Louis street corners in 1953 in a clandestine test program.
	No biological organisms were released in any of the tests.
	The Army claims the microscopic particles were harmless.
	But some scientists warn they do indeed present a potential chemical health hazard.
	Now, why did they do that?
	House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt made the information public Tuesday last summer.
	After revelations about the St.
	Louis program, Gephardt asked the Army for more information about its biological weapons tests.
	The aircraft test was one of more than 24 Cold War tests using zinc cadmium sulfide.
	The tests were designed to determine the dispersal patterns of biological warfare agents.
	The Army wanted to learn If it was going to be feasible to contaminate a large area, and if so, what logistics would be involved?
	Parts of the test report remain, to this day, classified.
	So, for those of you out there who think that spraying the public is something that this country would not do, I'm sorry.
	The Associated Press reports that in fact we actually did it.
	Sound of explosion.
	Music.
	Now, here's a neat little article entitled, it's from the Hearst newspaper group, entitled,
	Pentagon defends Oakland invasion.
	Marine and Navy officials are defending a planned mock invasion of Oakland, Monterey, and Alameda next month as a great opportunity to try out new military equipment and tactics in an urban setting.
	You guys in Oakland?
	Monterey and Alameda?
	Ready for an invasion?
	The Marine Corps says the war games, which have provoked strong local opposition, will help the service prepare for urban battle spaces of the 21st century.
	Anybody remember Seven Days in May?
	At one point, I think it was a colonel in Seven Days in May who said, I would like to know why our troops are preparing for a seizure, an apparent seizure of American cities.
	Not defending them, but rather seizing them.
	Do you recall that?
	That's an old movie.
	If you've never seen it, you would enjoy it.
	Anyway, war games, and coming to the Bay Area sometime soon.
	Very soon.
	Next month.
	So, good luck.
	It'll be interesting hearing what went on.
	And down in Texas, of course, they had an invasion of a little Texas town.
	And they used, in that case, live ammo.
	And they burned down a portion of a building.
	And the poor people in this little town had absolutely no idea this was about to occur, if you can imagine that.
	No idea at all.
	They were awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of Grenades going off, live ammunition being fired, and I can only imagine coming out of a rather sound sleep, looking out your window, seeing helicopters, boom, boom, boom, boom, with those big blades, and, you know, guys in Star Wars type outfits, rappelling down ropes, the sound of explosions, and automatic weapons fire.
	Now, that would get your attention, middle of the night, wouldn't it?
	That'd really get your attention.
	You'd probably think, oh my god, the Russians?
	It's actually occurring.
	So there you are.
	Otherwise, we're about to open the line.
	Oh, there is one thing here.
	A gal named Gwen called me, actually called me, faxed me today the following, Mr. Bell, this past weekend I went to purchase American Eagle Silver Dollars, one ounce size.
	Well, of course we have!
	one-tenth ounce dealer told me something i found very interesting he said
	they i assume he met the government by the are beginning to ration these particular denominations
	because of why two k have you or any of your sources out there heard of been
	told similar stories
	well of course we have that's exactly
	what gary north said last time he was on the program they're actually rationing these things.
	Can you imagine that?
	It has already begun.
	A fact is a fact, and now I've got another source on this.
	Why would they ration points?
	Rationing.
	That's a pretty stiff word.
	It sets off a lot of alarm bells.
	I've got one more little... You know, I get regular bulletins from my libertarian friends, because I am now a libertarian, have been for some time, Their latest release is... Well, I'll tell ya.
	It's, uh... It's gonna get you vibrating with anger!
	We'll be right back.
	You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
	Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 3, 1999.
	This is a video of the concert.
	The concert was held at the San Francisco International Music Center.
	Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 3rd, 1999.
	Good morning, everybody.
	Those of you in the morning and the evening.
	For those of you in the evening, good evening to you.
	This was sent to me.
	I am now an official member, as you know, of the Libertarian Party.
	Have been for quite a while.
	And they send me news bulletins all the time.
	This one takes the cake.
	News from the Libertarian Party.
	Libertarians urge pull the plug on silly Alabama law that bans vibrators.
	Should politicians decide what orgasms are government approved?
	Dateline Washington, D.C.
	Now listen to this.
	A judge should strike down an Alabama law that bans the sale of vibrators and other sex toys.
	According to the Libertarian Party, because America doesn't need politicians deciding what kinds of orgasms are government approved, this law is giving us bad vibrations, said Bill Witter.
	It's a quote.
	The party's director of communications.
	Fact is, the government has no business interfering in any private, consensual sexual activity between one person.
	It goes on.
	Invitingly, what's the buzz here?
	A court in Alabama is currently weighing the constitutionality of a law, a state law, that prohibits the sale of sex toys and makes the crime punishable by, get this, get caught with a vibrator in Alabama.
	And it's a $10,000 fine and up to one year of hard labor.
	A lawsuit to overturn the whole thing was filed by a group of women, including the owner of an adult shop, a saleswoman, For the saucy ladies line of sexual novelties and a Jane Doe who said she uses a doctor-recommended vibrator to overcome sexual dysfunction.
	A hearing was held in mid-February and the judge could issue a ruling any day now.
	So the Libertarian Party is urging that vibrators be released in Alabama.
	Now, with last night's interview in mind,
	a device of this sort could have saved this nation one year of horrible trauma.
	I am informed by one of my listeners that Hamilton, Ontario is about 40 miles north-northeast of Niagara Falls
	and 40 miles southeast of Toronto at the eastern point of Lake Ontario.
	Well, that answers why, let's see, there are three hours ahead.
	They could still fit another hour or two in there, I suppose.
	You might give them a call.
	But they are, of course, East Coast time.
	Alright, let's go to the phones and see what, of course unscreened, and see what waits for us out there.
	First time caller on the line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	I've got a neat little story for you.
	I can barely hear you.
	I've got a neat little story for you.
	Okay, what is your neat little story?
	First of all, where are you calling from?
	Sioux City, Iowa.
	Sioux City, alright.
	Remember a couple days ago you did your contrail show on the airplanes?
	Well, I have very mixed feelings about all of this.
	yeah here in the record of it movement clearly indicate that the guy just got them to
	know about that with respect to everything
	right look at the window and i think on that day and you saw a contract
	yet i think that
	making that annexes yeah uh... well okay i i i have very uh... mixed feelings about
	all of this in other words
	i think that uh...
	william thomas is definitely on to something I think that there is a tendency, once you hear a program like that, to unfortunately look up at comm trails and imagine the worst every time you see one.
	Well, I don't think every comm trail that's cut is a chem trail.
	Do I think there is some spraying going on?
	Yes, that's why I read you the story about St.
	Louis.
	And they've done it elsewhere.
	I guess I would caution everybody, don't attach something evil or ominous to every content trail you see cutting across the sky.
	But on the other hand, keep an open mind about the information that William Thomas has given us, because it's happened.
	I'm sorry to say, it has occurred.
	So, I don't know, we'll have William naturally back on the air to talk more about it.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi, good morning, Art.
	This is Raymond from Michigan.
	Hi, Raymond.
	By the way, before I get to my comment, I got your latest book with Brad Steiger.
	Yes.
	If this book is as good as the jacket cover, I'm really looking forward to it.
	That jacket cover is outstanding.
	Isn't that nice?
	Yeah, and it only took like five days to get here.
	We designed and then redesigned it.
	Well, they're shipping right away, and you were lucky because we're not going to be doing the autographed copies very long at all.
	Oh, good, because I got one.
	Well, in fact, that's about it.
	It's really rough.
	You have no idea what it's like to spend What little free time you have autographing books?
	No, I don't know what it's like.
	I can't imagine.
	I saw the show on Egypt.
	Oh, yes.
	And I know a lot of people kind of complained because they thought it was kind of... some of it was set up.
	And, well, yeah, I guess maybe some of it might have been, quote, set up, but I'm sure they had to go and look at those places first, number one, to make sure things were in there and to make sure it was safe.
	Put ladders down there and get it all set up.
	Sure.
	Because, you know, it's a live TV program.
	But I don't want people to misunderstand and think that when they say set up that things were planted in there like the mummy or pots or anything.
	I don't think things were brought over from other sites and just put in there just so we could make a little fake treasure hunt.
	It doesn't strike me that that's what they did.
	I think they did a little of that.
	In the sense that I think that Zahi had been into some of these locations.
	I'm just giving you my honest feeling.
	And perhaps he did not disturb nor fully excavate, but he was at least aware that they were not going to come up with a total goose egg.
	That's my take.
	Yeah, sure.
	And can I say something about Richard Hoagland?
	Absolutely.
	I know a lot of people have come down on him before for some of his sort of what people think are outlandish ideas.
	I know, I know.
	I think those same people ought to turn around and commend him for what he did down in Miami.
	They certainly ought to.
	He had a real big hand in it, and a big part in it, and I think they really ought to... You had better believe it.
	...commend him because, you know, he did some good things down there, and they all better realize it.
	I know.
	I appreciate your call, sir, and let me say this about Richard.
	Richard is a driven, articulate dapper.
	Individual who has been on this program on and off for years and years.
	Why?
	Does he go off the deep end every now and then?
	Hell yes!
	Is he out on the cut edge, as I'm prone to calling it?
	Yes, he is.
	Richard is.
	However, is a lot of what Richard says good science?
	You bet it is.
	Is a lot later recognized by mainstream science as being legit?
	You bet it is.
	Has Richard done a lot of good things?
	You bet he has.
	Is a lot of his research valid?
	You bet it is.
	And that's why you've heard him again and again on this program, because I've found over the years, knowing Richard, and he's a very good friend, that every time you think Richard has gone off the cliff, and you know me, I'll say it, there's lots of times I've told Richard, I think, Richard, you're going over the cliff here, what are you doing?
	Every time you think he's off the cliff, about two days later, you find out, wow, look, he's really on to something real here.
	And so Richard is one of those guys who's on the edge.
	And this program is on the edge.
	And so it's a match made in heaven.
	One particular part of heaven at 19.5.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	Had to kill all the noise real quick.
	Thank you.
	This is Andrew calling from Whidbey Island, Washington.
	Yes, sir.
	Boy, I, you know, I... Has it been windy up there?
	Oh, yeah.
	We hear that western Washington, portions of it, really got clobbered.
	Oh, yeah, man.
	It was howling last night like you wouldn't believe.
	Amazingly, the power only blipped.
	So, that was good news this time around.
	But anyhow, I wanted to talk about Neal Donald Walsh again.
	I've nearly gotten through his third book, and boy, Art, I'll tell you, if you want to read a book that you can really get something out of and take with you that's practical, oh, man.
	I don't know if he's really talking to God, but the wisdom that is written in the books is pretty profound.
	Yes.
	I agree with you.
	I just wanted to share that with people, you know, as far as that goes.
	You know, I think it's something that, you know, practicality-wise, it's something that I've been looking for a long time in a book because it's just... I mean, there's just, you know, there's so much fluff out there.
	All these little human interest stories and the Monica Lewinsky things, you know.
	Did you watch the interview?
	Uh, yes.
	Parts of it, you know, I was flipping between stuff.
	All I could do was say to myself as I watched, at the end of it all, Who cares?
	Oh my God, who cares?
	And we spent a year on this as a nation, diverted from all the important things in life.
	Damnedest thing I ever saw.
	Appalling, yeah, appalling.
	It's a waste of our time in the truest sense.
	I mean, we've got an environment that's dying off all around us.
	I know.
	And we're sitting here worried about this whole thing with the president.
	Trivial, you know, trivial.
	We have real things we need to accomplish here, you know?
	What are we doing?
	What we did was almost unforgivable.
	And I wonder if we would do it again.
	In other words, if something else like it cropped up with this president or a future president, would we really allow ourselves to be diverted For that kind of period of time, again.
	You gotta wonder, but you know what the really interesting thing about this is, too?
	I saw a survey recently that says that now 90% of the American populace say they would vote for a woman.
	And the speculation is that somehow Monica is responsible for this.
	I don't understand how this plays out, but I guess they see her as a woman who... I don't know.
	I would vote for a woman.
	I wouldn't vote for Hillary either, I have to admit.
	I don't know if you ever got to that webpage I sent you, the messages from the time travelers, but it says a lot about things she does.
	I'll tell you, that webpage is pretty bizarre.
	I might vote for Hillary.
	She's a very bright woman.
	Well, I think she's done a very good job with her public image.
	She's a very smart character, for sure.
	She's extremely intelligent.
	You know, I would like to know how many black eyes she's given the President.
	What I'll say, though, is that her heroine is Eleanor Roosevelt.
	And Eleanor Roosevelt has done, you know, obviously history will show that she's done some, you know, probably good things, but I think that overall, I have a suspicion that Eleanor Roosevelt is not someone who is a heroic individual.
	I haven't done my homework here.
	Alright, well listen, I do appreciate your call.
	Thank you.
	I think the First Lady actually is an amazing woman in a lot of ways.
	She's very bright, very articulate.
	Nobody questions that.
	But how has she kept her public cool throughout all of this?
	How has she done that?
	How has she possibly done that?
	And that she has, I think, is a testimony to her character.
	If not her husband's.
	International Line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello, Art.
	How are you?
	I'm fine.
	Where are you, sir?
	I'm right down at Chamberlain, Saskatchewan.
	Chamberlain, Saskatchewan?
	Yes.
	Out of curiosity, sir, how are you able to get through to our international line?
	I phone 1-800-CALL-AT&T, wait for the instructions, they ask you to dial the number or say the number, and it gets through that way.
	I see.
	Very good.
	Anyway, I was phoning concerning the Monica Gate thing, and earlier you had said that you didn't think that it made America look too good in the eyes of the world, and I was just comparing it to, say, France, perhaps, When their Prime Minister died and they had a state funeral, they not only invited his wife, but his mistress, to the funeral.
	And I think it has more to do with the perception of the country you're in.
	With the moral minority that you have there, and they're so voiceful, to them it's a big deal, whereas from somewhere else in the world it wouldn't be.
	I think Canada, and Britain also, are rather conservative countries, and there would be scandals there too.
	So I think it depends on where you're from.
	I guess it does.
	But I'm not from France.
	And after watching the interview tonight, I could just say to myself, what idiots we are for allowing ourselves to be diverted for a full year from things that were really important for this idiotic, teenage-like sexual diversion.
	Well, it seems to be the way things have been going ever since the Gary Hart, Donna Rice thing.
	And I'm just wondering if... Well, Gary Hart was an idiot.
	He turned to the press when he knew he was screwing around.
	He said to the press, follow me around.
	Be my guest.
	And they did.
	Yeah.
	But what I'm saying is this seems more orchestrated than usual.
	This isn't something that just happens to people find scandals.
	I appreciate your call, sir.
	Thank you.
	As it went on, the American people really, I think, agreed with me in that They wished the subject would simply go away.
	They wished that our elected representatives would begin concentrating on what we elected them to do, which is to improve our lot in life.
	To pay attention to what ought to be going on in the country.
	To address our overtaxed butts.
	I mean, there's a lot of things they could be doing that they didn't do because of Monica Lewinsky over the last two hours of watching Monica it should be driven home to you what a profoundly horrible thing she put us through and how completely truly insignificant the whole damn thing really was in the end anybody is going to lie about the kind of thing the president and Monica did they're going to lie about it
	And, uh, that's that.
	And, uh, yeah, he's right.
	You know, the French... I know the French people.
	They're... I love France, as a matter of fact.
	I love Paris.
	God, it's my favorite... One of my favorite cities.
	Uh, I think Paris and Bangkok are my two favorite cities in the world.
	And the Parisian people are wonderful.
	And they are very open-minded, nonplussed.
	You know, they just...
	They sort of take everything in stride, and if the Prime Minister has a mistress and the Prime Minister dies, the mistress gets to come to the funeral.
	I mean, that's just life.
	Well, to the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hi, Art Belchow?
	Yes.
	I'd like to talk to Art.
	Well, who do you think you're talking to?
	I don't screen calls, love.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	I'm calling from Los Angeles.
	Right.
	Yesterday, I heard the gentleman that called in about the couple comm trails that he saw.
	Yes.
	But yesterday over the San Fernando Valley, we were covered with them, more than you could count.
	And they even had it on the news, talking about what a pretty sunset it made.
	Oh really?
	Yeah, never seen anything like it before.
	Gee, now that's unusual.
	You don't hear the news frequently commenting on contrails.
	No.
	Ah, what beautiful contrails.
	Yeah.
	It was so significant.
	So I thought I'd just add that to your list of information.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	What they should have done is send out their little news truck with a bottle and tried to gather up some of what may have fallen from the sky and analyzed it before it turned into a mist and disappeared.
	Yeah.
	I couldn't actually see anything falling, but I can't imagine somebody spending all... Actually, my husband saw them starting the day before.
	In the meantime, they do a story on what beautiful contrails we have.
	Yeah, they did make a nice jump set.
	Take a nice, deep breath.
	Bye-bye.
	Bye-bye, take care.
	We're at the top of the hour when we come back.
	What a treat you're in for.
	What a brilliant man you're about to hear.
	The executive director of Asseti, Of the SETI League.
	We'll be here.
	It's going to be a blast.
	Don't touch that dial.
	You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
	Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 3rd 1999.
	Music.
	The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up through tarmac to the sun again.
	Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing.
	To lie in a meadow and hear the grass sing.
	To have all these things in our memories.
	And they used her to cover the school's fire.
	Why, why was she so quick to place On the street, just before me?
	Why, take a free ride, take a rest At the sea, it's not free
	I've worked like a slave for years Worked so hard just to earn my fears
	Had to end my life before they left But by now, I know, I should've cried
	Why, take a free ride, take a rest At the sea, it's not free
	I've worked like a slave for years Worked so hard just to earn my fears
	Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time Tonight's program originally aired March 3rd, 1999.
	Wanna take a ride?
	Well, you're about to.
	Uh, we have coming up in a moment, a Dr. Setti.
	As his intimates call him, he's actually Dr. H. Paul Shuck, known to his intimates as Dr. Setti.
	It's something of a cross between Carl Sagan and Tom Lehrer.
	PBS's Tom Lehrer.
	He sings like Sagan, lectures like Lehrer.
	The aerospace engineer, accredited with the design of the world's first commercial home satellite TV receiver.
	Wow, that's something.
	He made the first home satellite TV receiver.
	Now directs his microwave interest toward the search for life in space.
	Dr. Shuck received his Ph.D.
	in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
	Before joining the SETI League as its executive director, he served as an engineering professor on various campuses for a total of, get this, 24 years.
	Within the New Warrior Movement, Paul's teaching background earned him the name Patient Owl.
	Paul is the author of more than 200 publications.
	His honors include the National Space Club's Dr. Robert H. Goddard Scholarship, a Hertz Foundation Fellowship in Applied Physical Sciences, the Hertz Doctoral Thesis Prize, and the Central States VHF Society's John T. Chambers Memorial Award.
	He serves as a fellowship interviewer for the Hertz Foundation A manuscript reviewer for several peer-reviewed journals, has been an advisor to the National Science Foundation, and a military program evaluator for the American Council on Education.
	Born in 1946, among the first of the baby boomers, Paul lives on a radio-quiet hilltop, just north of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, with his biologist wife, Muriel Hikes.
	I hope I have that right.
	And five of their DNA experiments.
	Combined DNA experiments.
	He air commutes.
	Get this.
	He flies his own plane about 200 miles every couple of days, I guess.
	Is that every couple of days?
	To the SETI League's New Jersey office.
	That's two days a week.
	In his much modified 1970 Beechcraft A-24R Sierra.
	Recognizing that the most dangerous part of flying is the drive to the airport, Paul tempts fate by riding there on his trophy award-winning 1989 Honda PC-800 Pacific Coast.
	A Vietnam-era Air Force veteran and active instrument flight instructor, Paul serves as an FAA Aviation Safety Advisor, has been an airport commissioner, was once voted Flight Instructor of the Year by his FAA district office, And is part owner of the Fraser Lake Airport in Hollister, California.
	Holy mackerel!
	He designed the patented BIDCAS, I bet, B-I-D-C-A-S, Aircraft Anti-Collision Radar.
	Oh, yes!
	Which won the Experimental Aircraft Association Safety Achievement Award.
	He's also an extra class radio amateur.
	First licensed in 1961.
	N6-TX, that's his hand call.
	has been operational on all 20 hand bands between 1.8 and a megahertz and 24 gigahertz.
	Paul has chaired the VHF UHF Advisory Committee of the Amter Radio Relay League and served as technical director and board chairman of Project Oscar Inc., a predecessor to Amsat.
	He has served as a director of the Central States VHF Society and is currently for Central Pennsylvania Mensa.
	Ah, Paul was banquet speaker at the 1996 Dayton Hamvention.
	Dr. Schuck is listed in a whole bunch of who's who publications,
	and in a moment you're going to get a real treat, and we're going to talk to Dr. Schuck about what might be
	out there and how we can find it.
	And here, ladies and gentlemen, is Dr. Schuck.
	Doctor, welcome.
	Hello, Art.
	Good to be with you.
	It's great to have you on the air.
	You and I have a great deal in common.
	Oh, yes, indeed.
	You actually developed the first commercial home satellite TV receiver.
	When was that?
	That was in 1978, Art, and those were wonderfully exciting days for amateur microwaves, because in those days, the only real use of satellites for television was to relay network programming to network affiliates.
	order relay premium programming to cable tv companies and the communications industry was using one hundred
	thousand dollar terminals
	and a bunch of ham got together and said we can do this better we can do this cheaper we can have
	fun we can do this ourselves
	we can rip off programming well of course we weren't setting out to rip off
	programming it was just another engineering challenge
	i am i was working for a cable company uh... in the before
	anybody ever had a home satellite dish
	and i had a of of visionary boss who said
	i'm going to teach you about satellite television And so he hauled this little trailer with a 10-foot dish out to my house and parked it there and said, learn how to use it, and gave me a commercial ComTech receiver.
	And I put it all together.
	And pointed it in the right place, and finally got everything properly adjusted.
	I mean, these were back in the days when you might get a 120-degree LNA for $1,200.
	Actually, my first LNA was 180 Kelvin, and it was, oh, about almost $2,000 then.
	Oh, my God.
	And you know, the thing is, we got pictures.
	It was a 16-foot dish I had to use.
	The signals were sparkly, but, hey, it was video from the sky, and it was exciting.
	It was beyond belief to see it come down.
	Those early days were really exciting.
	I had heard your name way back when, and here I am talking to you now.
	It's a great honor, actually, to be speaking with you.
	It's a pleasure to be on your show.
	By the way, I have to take advantage of this opportunity to say good morning to my neighbors listening on WRSC, State College Pennsylvania.
	You want to name them?
	Say hello?
	No, I think a plug for the station is sufficient.
	A plug is OK.
	All right.
	You were born in 46.
	I was born in 45.
	I was first licensed as a ham in 1958.
	That's the year I started bootlegging.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	I didn't say that.
	You were a bootlegger, too.
	Everybody has to start off somehow.
	Actually, I was a pirate.
	I had several pirate stations on the air.
	Long, long ago.
	Way past the statute of limitations.
	Yes, I think it's safe to talk about these things now.
	Now I've got a great big ham station.
	We're on right now 432 affiliates scattered all the way across North America.
	You know, in Canada and the U.S.
	And so it's the biggest ham station I've ever had fun with.
	I think you probably radiate more collective, effective isotropic radiated power than you ever dreamed of.
	Well, I'm out about 15 light years now, I calculate.
	Ah, very good.
	Except for one minor detail, and this we'll talk about in further depth, in more depth later, but we've got this problem with AM radio.
	I love listening to AM radio because it bounces off the ionosphere.
	Ah, but I'm on FM too.
	Ah, but the AM that bounces off the ionosphere is not a very good candidate for interstellar communications because it just doesn't punch through into space.
	That's right.
	Ah, it's a horrible candidate.
	It's a good candidate for bouncing off the ionosphere and hearing several hundred or even thousands of miles away.
	Well, what we're looking for is hearing several hundred or even thousands of light years away.
	That's our challenge.
	That's our ultimate DX we're going after now.
	All right.
	Now, how did you come from satellite to where you are now with the SETI League, which is an organization that... First of all, how does the SETI League fit in with SETI?
	I've interviewed Dr. Shostak, so I know what that's all about, but I'm not sure about the SETI League.
	Seth Shostak and his organization, the SETI Institute, are a wonderfully complex and well-thought-out and well-executed search for intelligence signals from beyond.
	And we can talk a bit more about what they're doing because it's great research, but it has some interesting limitations.
	The last time, by the way, I spoke with him, he was down at Arecibo.
	Yes.
	Proudly plowing into the time they had purchased to listen on that monster.
	And a hurricane was bearing down on him, and during the interview, he actually had to pack up and get the hell out.
	Yes, and unfortunately, I received it went off the air for a few days, and there was some minor property damage.
	Not much damage to the telescope, but sadly, I have to report that several of the workers down there had their homes destroyed in that hurricane.
	They're rebuilding and regrouping now, and they are, of course, back on the air doing wonderful science.
	But it's the sorts of science that they're doing which requires the kinds of facilities which only governments can afford.
	And in fact, for many years, the government did SETI.
	NASA had a modestly funded SETI program.
	They were appropriating about five cents per American per year, which is pocket change.
	It's down in the noise level of the federal budget.
	Nevertheless, cumulatively, it does amount to about twelve and a half million dollars per year, and that's enough to raise the eyebrows of some of the budget balancers.
	So, about five years ago, Congress, in its infinite wisdom, cancelled the NASA SETI program in its entirety.
	In the process, they actually did help to reduce the federal deficit by 0.0006%.
	So that's good economics, I suppose, and SETI was off the air for a while.
	In fact, we discovered that perhaps SETI required the kinds of facilities which not even governments can afford.
	But SETI is the science that refuses to die, Art.
	It just keeps coming back.
	And the first reincarnation of SETI was Seth Shostak's organization, the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.
	Indeed.
	The SETI Institute was the first organization to privatize a piece of the NASA SETI program.
	Now, NASA SETI involves actually two distinct, different, complementary searches.
	And one of those searches, called the Targeted Search, is what the SETI Institute is continuing now through their program called Project Phoenix.
	The Phoenix Search looks with high-power, very sensitive, huge telescopes for hours on end at a handful of nearby interesting candidate stars.
	They pick the nearest sun-like stars out to a couple of hundred light-years and they have about a thousand stars on their candidate list.
	The stars are well chosen.
	They are very good candidates because These are stars that are about the right age and the right temperature and the right size to probably have habitable planets orbiting them.
	And if they happen to get lucky looking at these thousand stars, they may indeed detect another radio-polluting civilization, such as our own.
	So this is very good science.
	All right, can we talk a little bit about that?
	Because when I talked to the good doctor, he said, He admitted at the end of the day, after really pressing him, that ambient communications, for example, FM stations, television here on earth, all the rest of it, would be rather unlikely, actually, to be heard at a great distance, and about the only way you would actually hear anything through light years, would be if there were an intentional transmission, a transmission actually intended to traverse light years.
	Well, certainly a beamed beacon would make our job all that much easier.
	Leakage communication is not impossible, however, it's just incredibly challenging.
	And with leakage communication, that is the incidental radiation coming from another civilization's radio, television, and radar, it's very likely we would be able to impart any sort of meaning to the transmission.
	The very best we can hope for is that we can detect something which is clearly artificial, which Well, look at what would be coming from our own Earth right now.
	which say to us, this signal is not produced by any natural occurring mechanism.
	There had to be some intelligence behind it.
	Beyond that, we really don't think there's any message to decode in the leakage radiation,
	even if we're lucky enough to detect it.
	Well, look at what would be coming from our own Earth right now.
	I'm on, for example, 100,000 watt FM stations.
	Right.
	They generally are built with tall towers, or they're on mountains with slightly down-looking
	radiation from the antenna.
	Correct.
	Not necessarily intended to go up, but rather to cover communities.
	But some of that radiation will tangentially graze the Earth and continue out into space.
	It absolutely will.
	But would that be recognizable as anything 10 or 20 or 100 light-years out?
	Well, truthfully, Art, not while we're talking, because when we're talking, when we're modulating that FM radio, it's generating its power, it's distributing its power all over the spectrum, over 200 kHz bandwidth, in many, many sidebands.
	But, when I stop to take a breath, those sidebands stop, and all the power, for a very brief interval, shows up on one frequency on the carrier, and that's our best chance for interstellar detection.
	Fascinating.
	You're absolutely, of course, right about that.
	FM deviates outward from the center, and when you pause, there would be this strong signal.
	But, to somebody listening light years away, They probably won't be able to pull out the sidebands because they are spread too wide.
	That's right.
	But whenever we pause for a breath, that carrier pops up.
	And that carrier can be seen on our spectrum analyzers.
	Unfortunately, though, that would be completely at random.
	Yes.
	In other words, you would pause, or I would pause at random, and they would be sitting out there, getting the signal, trying to make some sense out of it, finally determining that what they were hearing was random.
	What they would determine, probably, Is that our planet is inhabited by a race of very sloppy studio engineers and we transmit a lot of dead air.
	Well, you really think they'd come to that conclusion?
	Only if they have a warped sense of humor that we do.
	What is the best shop that we've got?
	If we imagine a civilization roughly in the same period of development as we are in right now with regard to radio and television and microwave communications, The best shot would be what?
	Our most detectable signals during the 50 years or so that we have been radiating suitable signals for interstellar detection.
	Our best candidates were our Cold War over the horizon search radars.
	They were the strongest signals that had the maximum leakage into space.
	You mean like that stinking woodpecker the Russians had?
	Yes, and a whole flock of other similar radars.
	So what we have to hope, if we wish to detect other civilizations, is that they also go through a Cold War period.
	Well, you know, some of the nation's greatest theoretical physicists have decided that Not too many civilizations would make it past the discovery of Element 92.
	Of course, I hope they're wrong, but that's a sobering thought, absolutely.
	If other civilizations have self-destructed early in the stages of their technological development, as we very nearly did, Art, if that happened to other civilizations, then although our universe may be teeming with life, the number of potential communications partners for us out there would be extremely limited.
	On the other hand, if other civilizations have somehow learned to solve their economic and political and sociological problems, and to build lasting empires that can last as long as stars burn, then there are literally millions out there waiting for us to discover.
	And the SETI League is one of the ways that we hope to discover them.
	We'll talk in great depth about how we plan to do that.
	All right.
	And actually, if there are hams out there or people with satellite dishes, they can be part of this, can't they?
	This is participatory science.
	It's grassroots.
	It's a bunch of us with our backyard satellite dishes working together to gain humankind's entry into the cosmic sphere.
	So, folks, if you've got a satellite dish out there, an old Z-band dish, don't toss it away.
	We've got a use for it.
	For you.
	Wanna help?
	Stay right there.
	You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
	Tonight an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 3rd 1999
	I hear you asking me what's going wrong Why don't you ask me this?
	I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I'm not going to lie.
	You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
	Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 3rd, 1999.
	Incredible piece of music, that is.
	That's Stevie Nicks, of course.
	You know, I saw Stevie Nicks the other day, and she's not aging.
	Has anybody else out there noticed that?
	Stevie Nicks is not aging.
	All the rest of us are.
	What is Stevie doing?
	I swear, she looks the same as she did 20 years ago.
	You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
	Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 3rd, 1999.
	Back now to the SETI League's Dr. Schott.
	Doctor, welcome back.
	Thank you, Art.
	Before the break, we were talking about Project Phoenix, which was the first element of the late NASA SETI program to rise from the ashes of the budget balancers.
	And, of course, Phoenix, the symbol of rising from the ashes.
	Yes, it was beautiful symbolism.
	The name, I think, was very aptly chosen by our friends in California.
	The limitation to this wonderful science is When you do a targeted search, you're looking at only specific individual stars with a very high gain, very narrow, narrow beam with antennas.
	And that means that if you guess wrong, if you're looking at a star and there's another star right next door with signals emanating from it, you'll miss those signals.
	That's inevitable.
	You go through your list and you hope you picked right.
	And when you're done, when they're done with their list of a thousand stars, they will have looked With great sensitivity at one millionth of one percent of all the good candidate stars in our galaxy alone.
	One millionth of one percent?
	Right.
	So we've not only, not only have we not yet, well, we haven't even scratched the surface, no, we haven't even felt the itch.
	And this is the limitation which NASA recognized when they were doing their targeted search.
	So just to hedge their bets, They built a second search strategy, complementary with the first, and they called it the All Sky Survey.
	Now, the All Sky Survey does not look preferentially in any particular direction or at any particular star.
	It tries to sweep out, systematically, the entire sky, so that no direction in the sky shall evade our gaze.
	It's a very tedious process.
	It's incredibly time-consuming, but the idea is If you guess wrong on the targeted search, maybe you'll pick it up on the All Sky Survey.
	So NASA was doing both searches.
	When the NASA SETI program was cancelled, the SETI Institute picked up the targeted search, and the All Sky Survey was orphaned.
	And that's when the SETI League was founded.
	The founders of the SETI League said, we don't have the millions of dollars that it's going to cost to rent time on these huge telescopes To do targeted searches.
	And besides, someone else is already doing that anyway.
	What can we do that's productive?
	What can we do that nobody else is doing?
	Well, we can actually survey the entire sky slowly, tediously, meticulously, and patiently.
	And we can do so using a resource that has never before been tapped for SETI.
	And that is the world's cadre of microwave experimenters Ham Radio Operators, Citizens Band Radio Enthusiasts, Satellite Tinkerers, the non-professionals who can indeed be taught to do very good, credible science.
	Wow!
	Our prototype for all of this was looking at what happens in optical astronomy.
	Who, after all, discovers all the comets?
	Numbers?
	It's not Mount Palomar, it's not the Keck Observatory, they're too busy doing real science.
	Comets are discovered by Takutake in his backyard with a pair of binoculars.
	Now that's not to say comets are not real science.
	Of course they're real science, but they're the sort of real science that cannot produce predictable results.
	And when you're working for grant money, when you're working on a budget which requires showing publishable results, comet hunting is not necessarily the best game for that.
	But the amateurs, people like Alan Hale, who, although he is a trained astronomer, does his comet hunting in his spare time with his 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.
	People like Tom Bopp, who doesn't even own a telescope, but discovered the comet that bears his name with one that he borrowed from his local astronomy club.
	These are the people who are discovering the comets, because they have the time, they have the resources, they have the inclination, they have the interest, And it's not a nine-to-five job for them.
	This is something that becomes a passion for you when you get involved in astronomy.
	And yet, in the world of astronomy, after Alan Hale, I interviewed Alan, he's a great guy, discovered this comet, it was the biggest astronomical news, you know, for quite a period of time.
	If you're incredibly lucky, you can hit pay dirt.
	You can't budget it.
	You can't plan on it from year to year.
	You can't say, well, Second quarter, fiscal 99.
	I'm going to have to discover a comet.
	It doesn't work like that.
	It's a very random process.
	Kind of like SETI.
	We cannot forecast.
	We cannot predict.
	I'm asked all the time, when do you think you'll make contact?
	And of course, the answer is the SETI League.
	Well, of course, to answer something like that requires the gift of prophecy.
	The SETI League is a non-profit organization, so I'm not allowed to.
	In your professional opinion, Doctor, is the SETI League more likely to discover a signal It depends upon which of the two theories you personally hold with regard to the sorts of signals that are out there.
	See, I can envision two different possibilities, Art.
	One, there are a lot of civilizations out there that are radio-using, that are going through their radio-polluting phase, just as we do, that are generating incidental radiation.
	If that's true, those civilizations could well be detected by the targeted search.
	We probably wouldn't see them doing the all-sky survey.
	Possibility 2.
	There are a few civilizations, let's call them super civilizations, that are transmitting humongously powerful deliberate beacons.
	And those signals may be highly intermittent, they may be highly dispersed, they may be separated by thousands of light years, they may be incredibly rare.
	And if that is the case, then the All Sky Survey has the best chance of detecting those kinds of signals.
	Frankly, I think both kinds of signals are a possibility.
	So I think both searches are necessary.
	Alright, question.
	We are now certainly using a lot of radio aren't we?
	Yes.
	On all of Earth, Doctor, are we transmitting a beacon signal into space?
	Are we doing that?
	So far, in our short history of radio technology art, we have only done the deliberate beacon once.
	And that was done in 1974 from the Arecibo Radio Observatory, the largest antenna we have on this planet.
	It was a wonderful experiment, but it was only done one time.
	And since then, The political winds have shifted, and now international policy through the United Nations prescribes such transmission.
	Under Earth's law, right now, we are not allowed to do direct beacon transmission.
	What?
	We are a paranoid planet.
	There are those who say, we cannot give our positions away, they'll come here any time.
	You know what?
	You know what, Doctor?
	There are two astrophysicists up in Canada right now who wrote to the...
	The Prime Minister in Canada, and said that they too thought that amateurs should not be allowed full round with this sort of thing, because they might well engender an invasion of Earth.
	They're having a big controversy about this up in Canada.
	Yes, Ivan Dutille's letter was an interesting one, because it was intended to be read by politicians, but of course it got leaked to the press, so now the whole world is commenting on it.
	What Ivan was saying, as I understand it, is that if Earth is going to transmit, it should be done in a disciplined manner, it should be an international project, and people should have a voice in what's being said.
	His fear, which may indeed be a valid one, is the question of who speaks for Earth.
	If any individual can transmit his personal agenda to space, what kind of a message are we sending to our cosmic companions?
	On the other hand, to have a organized, unified planetary response Yes.
	requires big government.
	And when big governments get involved in science, the inevitable result is that the project
	ends up costing twice as much, taking twice as long, and working half as well.
	So we have a kind of a dilemma here.
	Nevertheless, at the moment, international policy prohibits deliberate transmission into
	space.
	Frankly, it's a little late for that.
	Our calling card is already in the mail through programs such as this that are going out right
	now at the fastest possible speed.
	You see, our spaceship of choice is the photon, the particle if you will, of electromagnetic radiation.
	The photon is the fastest spaceship known to man.
	It travels relatively unimpeded throughout the interstellar medium at the fastest Possible speed and there's no stopping it.
	There's no turning it back and that means that we've already given our position away How long what kind of transmission did we make on what frequency and for how long doctor?
	Let me see the exact frequency was around 2.8 gigahertz which is in what we call the microwave window the quietest part of the sky that range of frequencies where we're most likely to be able to work our way through the interstellar medium and The transmission was only, I believe it was something on the order of a minute and a half.
	It was a very brief transmission, or maybe in a couple of minutes.
	I'd have to look that up.
	The signal itself was wonderfully, elegantly designed in part by Dr. Frank Drake, who is now the president of the SETI Institute, our friend organization in California.
	And the signal itself provides a wealth of information about Earth, Earth life, and Earth technology.
	But the chances of it being detected are rather slim.
	If we want to transmit beacons, we've got to do a lot better than that.
	Beacons, by their very nature, stay up all the time, waiting for propagation conditions, as you well know in Hamradar or whatever else.
	A beacon is a beacon.
	It's not a one-and-a-half minute to two-minute transmission.
	Yikes!
	That was a shot in the dark.
	The transmission that Dr. Dutille in Canada is involved with is also a shot in the dark, but you have to start somewhere.
	What we're trying to do with transmissions like these is not send information to our cosmic companions.
	Those messages are intended for humans here on Earth.
	They are a way of saying to our population on Earth, we believe in this, and because we're willing to do some transmitting, there's hope that maybe others are as well.
	And this was in what year?
	1974.
	So, it's out there a ways now, at least.
	It hasn't probably intercepted any interesting shores yet, but who knows?
	It's going to mean that they've got to be listening on that frequency at that time for one and a half to two minutes, because that's all they're going to hear is one and a half to two minutes.
	For that particular transmission, yes.
	There are those who say that the Arecibo transmission was little more than a publicity stunt.
	And it's true that it was times to coincide with the rededication of the Arecibo Radio Observatory after they put a new surface on it.
	Two years ago, they did another re-engineering of Arecibo.
	They did another major upgrade.
	They added a Gregorian feed and did some improvements to the surface and put a skirt around the antenna.
	Some very good engineering was done at Arecibo.
	I asked Dr. Paul Goldsmith, who is the director of the Arecibo Observatory, are you going to do another transmission when Arecibo goes back on the air after this refurbishment?
	And his answer was basically, we're not allowed to.
	So indeed, in scientific circles at least, the international legal ramifications are well understood.
	Who is the actual agency that forbids that, do you know?
	There's actually a proposal that was made by the International Astronomical Union through the United Nations.
	We are indeed signatory to it.
	So the UN forbids transmission of a beacon of the sort we're discussing right now.
	They actually forbid it.
	The actual language is a little more complex than that.
	Of course, the lawyers were involved, so you know the language will be complex.
	But it says that any deliberate transmission has to be done with full international cooperation and collaboration and full agreement.
	Now, trying to get all the nations on Earth to agree to say gesundheit when I sneeze is nigh unto impossible.
	That's right.
	So, um, I really don't think we're going to be seeing any official transmission.
	On the other hand, the technology is already out of the bag.
	Anybody who seriously wants to transmit to the stars can do so.
	Oh, yes.
	It's really hard to stop them.
	It's impossible even to detect it.
	If I beam energy straight up, if I'm doing amateur moon bounce, if I'm bouncing my microwave signals off the moon at 1296 megahertz, My energy is going up and is carefully focused to hit the moon.
	Unless the FCC happens to have a monitoring station on the moon, how can they know?
	They wouldn't.
	They wouldn't.
	This would apply, of course, to institutional attempts.
	Oh, of course.
	You're absolutely correct.
	Now, what could a person do at 2.8 gigahertz with a 5 meter dish and as much power as you could muster?
	What could actually be done?
	You might be able to cook a hot dog at 50 paces.
	No, no, no, no.
	I meant the same.
	That's probably about it, Art.
	I do not think that the amateur five meter dish is going to give you interstellar communications capability.
	The project that's being proposed right now that actually is in the working phases to do another transmission, this private project that Dr. Dutille was talking about in Canada, that project is renting time on a huge radio telescope facility in the former Soviet Union.
	Uh, it's not quite as big as Arecibo, but it's one heck of a lot bigger than my, uh, five meter backyard dish.
	What about... The antennas that we have, however, are not useless because they're very well adapted to listening.
	To listening.
	That's what they excel at.
	You see, um, if we're very lucky, the guys at the other end will produce the power.
	Power, more power than we could begin to imagine.
	And if they have their multi-megawatt transmitters going into their Arecibos, Over interstellar distances, we can pick that up with our backyard dishes.
	All we have to do is be pointing the right way, tuned to the right frequency, at the right time.
	Now, this is the limitation with the targeted searches.
	Those antennas only look at one part in ten to the sixth of the sky.
	That's one millionth of the sky at a time.
	That's wonderful for sensitivity, but it's terrible for detecting those random, highly intermittent signals that we hypothesize might be out there, because After all, with an antenna of that sort, if you've got your receiver on at exactly the right frequency, at exactly the right instant when the call comes in, there's still a 99.9999% chance you'll be pointed the wrong way.
	Well, there is a possible solution.
	You could build a million of these antennas and coordinate them so they're pointing in all directions at once.
	Cover the whole sky with these great radio telescopes.
	But at a hundred million dollars a piece, Art, we've just exceeded the gross planetary product.
	Fortunately, there's a cheaper way.
	Small antennas, like our 3-, 4-, and 5-meter backyard satellite TV dishes, our old C-Band TVRO dishes.
	I have a 3.8-meter dish in my backyard that I wouldn't give up.
	You know, I hold on to things as... I'm a pack rat, and I love that satellite dish.
	I would never, ever give it up, even though I don't use it a lot, you know?
	Well, you're going to use it.
	You're going to build a steady station with it, because those antennas may not have the sensitivity of the big monsters that the targeted searches use, But they have an interesting advantage.
	Their beam width is about 200 times wider than the so-called research-grade radiotelescopes.
	And that means that it only takes 5,000 of them properly coordinated to cover the whole sky, all 4 pi steradians of space and time.
	5,000 hams, 5,000 experimenters, can do something that NASA said he'd never contemplate, and that is see in all directions at once.
	And let me emphasize, this is listening, this is SWLing.
	You don't have to have a ham license.
	No government has to authorize your transmission because we're not transmitting, we're listening.
	At least in this country.
	At least, well even worldwide, many people in many countries now.
	We have a thousand members in 52 countries and growing all the time.
	We have, we're just in our infancy because the Feddie League is just starting to develop this network, or Project Argus as we call it.
	But our Project Argus network has, right now, 70 stations on the air.
	Now, that's just a drop in the bucket next to the 5,000 we need, but that's more Ham SETI stations on the air than all the professional radio telescopes in the world combined.
	All right.
	Now, everybody with a home satellite dish, listen closely.
	You might need a little bit of technical expertise, and we're going to give that to you as best we can tonight.
	My dish, like other people's satellite dishes, Is in what's called a polar configuration, so that as the dish turns, it tracks the Clark Belt and sees the various television satellites in the Clark Belt.
	Right.
	Would I have to change that?
	Well, you might probably want to move the antenna just a little bit up and down.
	In elevation?
	Off the Clark Belt, change the elevation, only because the Clark Belt is pretty heavily polluted.
	Noisy.
	We've got a lot of stuff out there.
	Sir Arthur Clarke is one of the technical advisors to the SETI League.
	And bless him, he told me, you're going to have to give up watching the Clarke Belt satellite.
	And he was willing to make that concession.
	Because if you crank the antenna away from the Clarke Belt, all of a sudden, the noise level drops.
	And the beautiful thing about looking at the sky is that you will find stars no matter where you point.
	In any direction there are stars, and anywhere there are stars, we now know there are planets.
	And anywhere there are planets, there's a chance that one or more may be habitable.
	And if there are habitable planets, one or more of them may harbor a radio-using civilization.
	How much work would I have to do, Doctor, to take my little 3.8 meter dish I can certainly change elevation easily on it, so I can get out of the Clark Belt to a radiation noise level, no problem there.
	Right.
	Now how much work do I have?
	I've got a hard line running in from the dish to the house.
	How much work do I have to do?
	You're probably going to have to swap out the head end electronics arc, and the reason is Your satellite TV system is operating in the 3.7 to 4.2 gigahertz band.
	We don't believe that's the best frequency range for SETI.
	We could be wrong, and in fact some people are using TVRO receivers, highly modified albeit, and some people are listening in that band.
	And that's good, because there are no wrong frequencies for SETI.
	There is no interplanetary band plan that anybody is adhering to, as far as we know.
	I've got an old 90 degree LNA sitting up there right now.
	Right.
	If you want to listen on 3.7 to 4.2, you've got a shot at it.
	But we believe, and this is highly speculative, we believe there are better frequencies slightly lower in the microwave spectrum in the region from 1.3 to 1.7 gigahertz.
	And that means you're going to need to use a different feed horn.
	All right.
	And a different LNA.
	All right.
	And we can help you with that.
	All right.
	And that's exactly what we'll talk about when we get back.
	We can do it.
	And maybe we should.
	Stay tuned.
	You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
	Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 3, 1999.
	Good luck with this one, we gotta get right back to where we started from.
	Do you remember that day?
	That sunny day.
	A new birth day.
	You got me running, going out of my mind.
	You got me thinking that I'm wasting my time.
	Don't bring me down.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	I'll tell you once more before I get up and go.
	Don't bring me down.
	You wanna stay out with your fancy friends.
	I'm telling you I gotta be here.
	Don't bring me down.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	I'll tell you once more before I get up and go.
	Don't bring me down.
	You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
	Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 3rd, 1999.
	Good morning, everybody.
	The SETI League's Executive Director is with us, Dr. Paul Schuck.
	And some people call him Dr. SETI.
	You can do that or call him Dr. Paul Schuck.
	I believe it's Dr. H. Paul Schuck, actually.
	But if you'll listen very carefully, And if you have a satellite dish out in your backyard, instead of junking it, which I would never do in a million years, I love my satellite dish, always have, there's a good use for it.
	See, I've got little dishes now, and I get to digital television, so I don't need my old dinosaur anymore.
	But do I keep it in working condition?
	You bet.
	Why?
	I don't know.
	Nostalgia?
	Or maybe, just maybe, I knew something like this was going to come along one day.
	So in a minute we're going to tell you how to take a dish like the one I've got and turn
	it into something that might change history.
	You know that slogan I'm so fond of lately that I've been repeating so many times?
	H.L.
	Mencken said it, quote, every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
	Well, when daylight comes today, I'm going to find the man or the woman who changed my phone company during the day today without telling me, and I am going to slit them ear You have no idea what's been going on tonight with my telephones.
	So, if you are disrupted in any way, I apologize.
	I can't imagine they've done that to me.
	They actually switched phone companies on me.
	You know, breaking up AT&T was the worst damn thing we ever did.
	Now, Doctor, welcome back.
	Thank you.
	Alright, here I've got my 3.8 meter dish.
	My lovely, beloved 3.8 in the backyard.
	And, despite the fact that it takes up a lot of room, and it's big, I love it.
	And now I've got... Absolutely.
	I've got a new... You call these things big, ugly dishes, and I don't know why, because I think they're beautiful.
	They are beautiful.
	They are absolutely... They are things of beauty, and of course, I guess you've got to be a technical person to admire... Mine is a... It's fiberglass with a solid center, and, you know, it's not mesh inside.
	This is a good dish.
	And so, what do I do, Doctor?
	How do I help?
	How do I convert it?
	Well, you have a slight dilemma, Art.
	Because, you see, the optical astronomers have it easy.
	Even in my little, uh, sleepy town of Kogan Station, Pennsylvania, I can walk into a shop and buy an optical telescope off the shelf.
	I can give them my credit card and walk home with something that I might just discover a comet with.
	Right.
	But you can't walk into your local Radio Shack store and buy a radio telescope, at least not yet.
	We're trying to change that, but for right now, the people who are doing serious radio astronomy, amateur radio astronomy, the people who are involved with the SETI League's Project Argus Sky Survey have to be willing to do some of the work themselves and it's kind of like the early days of satellite TV.
	Remember when you couldn't buy a satellite TV system?
	You went out and you acquired a dish, and then you had to buy a feed horn.
	That's right.
	And then from somebody else, you got an LNA.
	That's right.
	And then from my old company, Microcom, you bought a receiver.
	And then from somebody else, you got a modulator, and you put it all together and plugged it into your TV set, and you watched all those sparklies, and they were absolutely wonderful.
	That's exactly what I did, yes.
	Well, that's kind of the state of the art for amateur Radio astronomy today.
	There are no turnkey systems out there, at least not that the hams can afford.
	But if you're willing to piece things together, and if you know which end of the soldering iron is the handle and how to put a connector on a hunk of coax, you can probably put together a radio telescope that would rival the very best that NASA had just 20 years ago.
	Really?
	That's our progress.
	You see, we're making up in digital signal processing power, in computer horsepower, what we lack in antenna capture area.
	And today's computers, today's home computers are incredible.
	You know, I have sitting on my desk right now an old, ancient 486.
	And it outperforms by a factor of a thousand the computers that NASA used to put men on the moon.
	Only we're not trying to go to the moon, we're trying to reach much further out.
	And these computers, even the cruddy old computers that we've replaced with our Pentiums, You do a wonderful job of sifting through the cosmic static, looking for patterns that the human ear or eye could not detect.
	Well, we are presently, Doctor, doing a three-month experiment in sending moving video over the web.
	Right.
	And when that's over, as of a little present, they are leaving me with the 450 megahertz computer that's doing the job on this end, and so it's available.
	Well, you've got your dish and you've got your steady computer.
	Now you need everything that goes in between.
	Yes.
	So let's talk about the rest of the system.
	at the focal point of your dish.
	There's a little feed horn right now used to scoop up those C-band photons
	falling from the sky for satellite television.
	Let's assume for just a minute that you're interested in doing radio astronomy,
	doing SETI in the L-band, the range of frequencies that many of us are operating at.
	It's not the only place to look, because there's only one wrong setting for your SETI equipment,
	and that's off.
	I assume you want to listen in L band.
	That's where I'm listening.
	That's where a lot of our members are listening.
	Which is what frequency range?
	We're looking from around 1.3 gigs, just above the ham, 23 centimeter band, up to around 1.7 gigs.
	Why there?
	What is the logic?
	There are several things pointing us in that direction.
	First of all, the technology is very mature in L-band.
	You can get super performance for a trivial cost.
	35 Kelvin low-noise amplifiers for $100.
	Wow!
	So, that's the range of the spectrum where the maturity of the technology makes super performance very affordable.
	That's item 1.
	Item 2 is if we look at the sky.
	At low frequencies, we have a lot of galactic noise.
	And at high frequencies, we have a lot of quantum noise.
	And in between is the quiet part of the spectrum.
	We call it the microwave window, and it goes from about 1 to about 10 gigahertz.
	Okay.
	Anywhere in that range, signals will travel over interstellar distances with minimal attenuation, with minimal distortion.
	Those signals should be detectable across the cosmos.
	Alright, but you're picking a relatively small portion of that.
	Right.
	You have to start somewhere.
	Within that quietest part of the sky, there are a couple of naturally occurring noise sources.
	The most prominent of them, at a frequency of 1420.40575 MHz, there is a very loud interfering signal, there's loud QRN, if you will, from interstellar hydrogen.
	Hydrogen is the most abundant element in interstellar space.
	There's about one hydrogen atom per cubic centimeter out there.
	Now, that's not a very high atmospheric pressure, but there's a lot of cubic centimeters, so there's a lot of hydrogen.
	And hydrogen atoms, every now and then, spit out a photon on a very well-defined, very specific frequency, 1420 megs.
	Those hydrogen photons were one of the first natural interstellar radiation lines that were studied by radio astronomers back in 1951 at Harvard University.
	So, it in itself is kind of a cosmic beacon that others elsewhere might recognize?
	We believe that the hydrogen radiation line might be your marker frequency, your crystal calibrator on your receiver.
	And the reason we think this is that any civilization that's emerging, that's evolving radio astronomy, will discover that one first.
	That was the first one that we discovered.
	It's a loud, easy to receive radiation line.
	The hydrogen line is a good place for radio astronomers to look when they're studying natural astrophysical phenomena.
	What does it sound like?
	It just sounds like an unsquelched FM handy talkie.
	It's just a background whoosh of noise.
	White noise.
	White noise.
	And it's certainly not a good place to try to listen through for signals, but if I'm already tuning the hydrogen line to do natural astrophysical observations.
	I've got you.
	There's a chance that I might pick up something tuning off to one side or the other.
	So if you were going to send out a beacon, you might do it on one side or the other of 1420, the hydrogen frequency.
	The folks who first proposed modern SETI thought so.
	In 1959, Phil Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi at Cornell University wrote an article, a short paper in Nature magazine.
	That article was titled, Searching for Interstellar Communication.
	And they were proposing how we might go about looking for other civilizations.
	It's a wonderful article because it was a seminal article that started SETI.
	In that article, they proposed listening on the hydrogen line.
	They proposed using the largest radio telescope then in existence, the 250-foot dish at the Jodrell Bank, the Manchester University facility in England.
	And they went through their calculations, figuring what it would take in terms of transmitter power to detect over interstellar distances signals on that frequency with that dish.
	And what they came up with was amazing.
	They picked a dozen nearby stars, all out to about 15 light-years, And they showed that using Earth-style transmitters, we could, even then in 1959, have a good chance of detecting signals if they emanated from those dozen stars.
	Right.
	Incidentally, the dozen stars, the candidate stars in the Cocconi and Morrison article, they're still on the SETI Institute's list of good targets.
	They still, 40 years later, look like very likely possible candidates.
	At any rate, If we're going to be listening on 1420, we don't want to stick to just one channel.
	We want to tune around a bit.
	So if we look across the radio band, we look for other signposts.
	And as we tune up this quietest part of the microspectrum, going up from 1420, the hydrogen line, the next signal that we encounter is radiation from interstellar hydroxyl.
	That's the OH radical for the chemists out there.
	And the hydroxyl radical transmits a very distinct signal At 1667 megahertz, plus or minus a little bit.
	1667, all right.
	And that's just up the band a little bit from the hydrogen line.
	So you've got the hydrogen line down on the left-hand side and the hydroxyl line on the right-hand side in the two loudest signals in the quietest part of the spectrum.
	So in other words, as we're putting our system together, we can use these to know when we've got it together.
	Yes, we use hydrogen.
	We look at hydrogen all the time.
	In fact, one of our members, Dan Fox in Indiana, who I hope is listening tonight.
	Hi, Dan.
	One of our members has developed software to actually map the hydrogen line with his SETI system, and he's put some beautiful graphics together, which are on the SETI League website, which, incidentally, I have to plug right now, www.setileague.org.
	And we've got a link on our website, folks.
	Yep, and you'll find about 1,500 documents, about 50 megabytes of information, so happy browsing, folks.
	If you don't have web access and you want further information, drop us an email if you have those capabilities, radio at spettyleague.org, and send us your postal address.
	We'll drop a brochure in the mail to you.
	All right, all right, all right.
	But let's keep going.
	Now, I can get a 35 degree Kelvin low noise amplifier.
	Cheap, cheap.
	Yes.
	What else?
	Let's look at the span that we're looking at.
	1.3 roughly to 1.7 gigs.
	You see, between hydrogen and hydroxyl, there's nothing else.
	It's dead quiet.
	Gotcha.
	So it's a good band.
	We believe that nature might have put those markers there for us as a deliberate way of saying, look, here's where we're going to have the interstellar communication band.
	There's another nice coincidence.
	Hydrogen and hydroxyl are the disassociation product of water.
	Or, to run it backwards, if we put hydrogen and hydroxyl together the right way, we get water.
	The hydrogen line and the hydroxyl line are out there as pointers.
	We believe that life, at least life as we know it, requires liquid water.
	So any other water-based life might recognize some significance to the hydrogen line right next to the hydroxyl line, and they may say, here's a good place to look for other water-based life.
	And so the transmission, if they made one, would likely or possibly come between 1420 and 1667.
	We're hoping, and that's the range that we're concentrating on at first.
	Of course, if we guess wrong, we've got to look somewhere else, and Ham's have always done that.
	You call on one frequency.
	If you don't get an answer, you Q-S-Y.
	You tune up the band and try somewhere else.
	That's right.
	But that's where we're starting.
	So you've got your dish.
	You need to convert it to that L-band region from around 1.3 to around 1.7 gigs.
	And that means, step one, get rid of your old C-band feed horn and LNA.
	You're going to need an L-band feed horn.
	These are fatter photons, so you need a bigger piece of pipe.
	You can build your own if you're good with tin snips and sheet metal and pop rivet guns and we've built them out of three pound coffee cans.
	But if you want a really nice commercially built feed horn, they cost $100 to $150.
	That's not bad.
	So you get an L-band feed.
	Right.
	Then on the output spigot of the L-band feed, on the type-in connector with a little barrel adapter... God, I hate type-ins.
	But they're really good microwave connectors.
	I know they are, but they're such a pain in the butt to put together.
	Alright, so we've got the L-band feed, and on the end of that we're going to put... A little LMA.
	Low Noise Amplifier.
	The job of the preamp, or low noise amplifier, Is to take an impossibly weak signal, and to turn it into merely an incredibly weak signal.
	And we can do that for $100 to $200, depending upon how fancy, actually $50 to $200, depending upon whether you want to build from kit or buy already assembled.
	So worst case, I'm into this $350 by now.
	Right.
	Okay?
	Now you've got a microwave signal in L-band, and you need to somehow process it.
	Let's assume for just a minute, I know you're a ham, you've got yourself a two meter radio, If you have a receiver capable of tuning the 2 meter ham band, and let's say tuning it in sideband mode.
	I do.
	What you need to do is take this L-band microwave signal and shift it down.
	You need a converter.
	Right.
	And you can buy converters now in kit form for about $130 or built and tested for about $200.
	Really?
	Yep.
	And it's basically a modified 23 centimeter ham converter.
	See the 23 centimeter ham band?
	Has a lot of activity at 1,296 megahertz.
	That's where I bounce signals off the moon.
	And there's a lot of equipment out there for 1,296.
	It's not a very big tweak to move it from 1,296 up to 1,420.
	Actually, I've got a nice Yaesu 736R here.
	It probably already tunes what you need, then.
	Well, close.
	But if it doesn't, well, the converter, as I say, outside, worst case, if you don't feel like building it yourself, $200.
	In fact, I must confess, we're recommending Uh, that most of our members probably ought to buy the converter already assembled, because most of us don't have microwave test equipment or the expertise to tune things up and check them out.
	Alright.
	And for the few bucks more, you can get something that you know is guaranteed working.
	Alright, so now we're at about $550, worst case.
	Right, and now you've got, coming out the IF spigot of your converter, You've got a 2 meter signal.
	Actually, it's a microwave signal that's been shifted down to 2 meters.
	Right.
	Plug that into your existing 2 meter ham receiver if you've got one.
	If not, they're not expensive.
	Right.
	And you can find those at flea markets these days.
	Sure.
	You're actually almost home now, because what comes out of your 2 meter receiver is audio.
	When you point at the stars, what's going to come out of your receiver is noise.
	Lots of random, chaotic noise.
	If you're incredibly lucky, buried in that noise somewhere might be ET calling home.
	But you'll never hear it.
	What you need is high power computing to be able to sift through the noise, looking for that elusive needle in the cosmic haystack, trying to find the cosmic weed amongst the galactic chaff.
	Okay.
	And in order to get the signal into the computer, you need an analog to digital Analog to digital.
	Really?
	It works.
	It takes the audio out of the receiver and makes ones and zeros out of it, and that's all we need.
	And the cheaper the sound card, the better, because we don't need the fancy bells and whistles.
	We've got our own software to do the fancy stuff.
	So now we've got ones and zeros in the computer, Next step is we need software to sift through this chaotic noise looking for recognizable patterns.
	The software is all shareware.
	It's all available from the Fetty League website.
	I'll say it again, www.fettyleague.org.
	You mean we can just download that there?
	Right.
	it's written by our members and it's out there for for you uh... some of our there are several different
	programs on the website
	so far members are asking for a contribution ten or twenty dollars
	it's trivial basically
	alright hold on doctor uh... will go the rest of the way with this this is really
	exciting stuff if you've got one of those big dishes and you're a ham
	even if you're not a ham i hope you're listening closely
	all the information you seek is going to be on the website that he named it's linked on our page right now you're
	listening to art bell somewhere in time on premier radio networks
	Tonight an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 3rd
	1999 We let the girl, watch that sea, dig it fast and clean.
	Shining night and the lights are low, looking up our place to go.
	We're the band of white music, getting in the swing.
	you Looking up for a place to go.
	Well, okay, the white music's getting in the way.
	Watching every motion in my foolish lover's game All this telepotion, blinding lovers love I trade
	Turning every time to some secret place inside Watching his slow motion as you turn around and say
	Take my brother away Take my brother away
	Take my brother away Watching like he may still answer the phone
	Never had the time Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
	Tonight's program originally aired March 3rd, 1999.
	Well listen, if you're with us tonight and saying, gee, this is kind of technical, I don't know.
	Just bear with us, because there are a lot of people out there for which this is definitely not too technical.
	People who will join in the effort, and I'm making very careful notes in case you wondered.
	Yes, I am going to be one of those people.
	No question about it.
	An L-band feed.
	Feed horn.
	That's easy.
	An LNA.
	Easy.
	A converter.
	Easy.
	And the analog-to-digital converter is nothing more than the sound blaster in your computer.
	Once again, easy.
	And the software is available on the SETI League site.
	Again, easy.
	So once we have all that set up, I guess the next logical question, the one I'll ask in a moment, is...
	What does that software do?
	How does it do it?
	And who does it report to, in essence?
	Do we do data dumps on a daily basis?
	Or does the software sort of go beep, beep, beep when it finds something really interesting and report back to headquarters?
	That's where we're going next.
	Now we take you back to the night of March 3rd, 1999 on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
	Now we take you back to the night of March 3rd, 1999 on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
	By the way, when I get off the air tonight, in about 2 hours and 20 minutes, I think it is?
	21 minutes?
	2 hours and 21 minutes.
	I tried it last night, and the band was so noisy.
	I'm going to crank up the rig, the kilowatt here, on 3830, 3.830, way down in the 75 meter band, and talk to any of you who happen to be awake at that hour.
	That would be 6 a.m.
	Eastern Time, or about, I don't know, 5 minutes after 3 here on the West Coast.
	So I'm going to do that again.
	I tried it last night, but oh my, the band was noisy.
	I am a very, very active ham doctor, and I'm going to be doing All of this.
	Now, let us continue.
	We've got an analog-to-digital converter in our Sound Blaster.
	That's exciting, so I'm not spending any money there.
	A lot of hams wouldn't be.
	Then we get the software, and I've got about a million questions about that.
	Once I get the software installed, and it's listening, does the software listen across that spectrum, or is it listening to specific frequencies?
	Right now, Art, the software is set up to scan the audio spectrum coming out of your receiver.
	Depending on what kind of a 2 meter receiver you're using after your converter, you may only have about 3 kHz of bandwidth or as much as 22 kHz.
	So, you'll be scanning an audio band.
	Right.
	Later, of course, this is tomorrow's technology, we'll be scanning the entire Waterhole region the entire 1.3 to 1.7 gig region, but that's going to come later We have to start off in small steps Let me backtrack for just a second though And we'll come back to the software and the computer does because we've been talking technical quite a bit tonight Yes, and that may be a little bit intimidating I know a lot of people out there are saying I can't do that and it's a little scary and
	Fortunately, you're not going it alone.
	There's a lot of help out there.
	The Feddie League has a network of about 50 regional coordinators all over the world.
	Their job is to help the less technical people come along.
	Any Feddie League member gets this consulting help for free.
	Really?
	In fact, several of our coordinators are listening tonight.
	One of our more active ones has got a great station on the air, Steve Carver in Little Rock.
	Hi, Steve.
	I know you're listening.
	Our coordinators build stations and demonstrate them to other interested members.
	You do have to be a member because we are a membership supported organization and if you want a membership brochure just drop us a note to an email to radio at CetiLeague.org or you can mail us P.O.
	Box 555, P.O.
	Box 555, Department R in Little Ferry, as in small boat, Little Ferry, New Jersey, USA.
	The zip is And we will repeat that, folks.
	Absolutely.
	So drop us a line or an email, and we'll get the membership brochure off to you.
	And once you become a member of the SETI League, you'll be one of, right now, about 1,000 people around the world who are supporting this kind of research.
	And you don't have to be a rocket scientist.
	That's the first thing we learned.
	And the second thing we learned is that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that it doesn't take a rocket scientist.
	These are ordinary people.
	We have members from all walks of life.
	Who's building SETI stations?
	We've got a fellow in Canada who is a construction contractor, a builder.
	We've got a woman in Hawaii who is a physician.
	We've got a man in Germany who is a nurse.
	We have people from all professions, all technical abilities.
	And with the help that's available off the website and from our regional coordinators, these folks are finding it's not all that hard to build a very credible, research-grade radio telescope around surplus bits and pieces.
	So in other words, the average person with their old C-band dish, even if they're not a ham, with the right kind of help, could put it together and be part of all this?
	Yes.
	And a lot of people are doing that right now, but we need a lot more to make this work, and that's why We're pitching it to the masses, as you will, through this wonderful radio network of ours.
	We're trying to tell people that they can be part of it, and if enough people will work together on this, we can accomplish something that no government could accomplish.
	The beauty of privatized science is that when you have thousands of people in dozens of countries around the world working together collaboratively, no matter what we discover, it will become public knowledge.
	No government can ever squelch what we're doing.
	They can't cut our budget.
	Well, I'm sure we'll get to talking about that in a moment, but let's come back for a second now to, okay, we've got all this working as you described.
	Right.
	We've got the software operating and listening.
	Now, I said to you when I got you on the phone before the program, look, I don't have an azimuth elevation mount.
	I mean, I can change elevation, sure, and I can get out of the seaband.
	That's easy.
	Just screw a nut a few times and I'm out of the seaband.
	Yes.
	I don't have the ability to move easily in azimuth and elevation.
	And you said, well, it doesn't matter.
	No, it doesn't.
	Because with enough stations on the air, if everybody picks a slightly different elevation, and we'll help coordinate that when we reach critical mass.
	We're not there yet.
	With only 70 stations on the air, we're still in the shakedown phase.
	Of course.
	We're still learning how to do this.
	But at some point, when we've got a thousand or so stations on the air, we at headquarters will help to coordinate exactly where everybody should point.
	The Earth is a wonderful azimuth rotor.
	And somebody else is paying the electric bill on that one.
	In other words, we are constantly seeing new stars from any single point, with a single pointing, from Earth, right?
	Yes, it's a technique known as drift scan radio astronomy.
	When you're operating in DriftScan, your antenna is locked down and the Earth moves it, sweeping out sections of sky systematically.
	Now, if we've got a thousand or so stations all looking at slightly different declinations, that's just a fancy term for your elevation in the sky, if you've got enough different stations on with enough different elevations, you cover, over time, the entire sky.
	And we'll help coordinate that.
	The trick is to know where you are and where you're pointing.
	Now that's where I was going next.
	If the software should detect a signal, it would come and it would go.
	Yes.
	And unlike the SETI operation, where they can bring the dish off point, bring it back on point, and try and decide if they've got a real signal, Art Bell, with his dish pointed at the sky, who gets a signal, it's going to come, it's going to go, Good questions, Art, and they're all in the grand scheme.
	First thing you need to realize is you can't go it alone.
	So how do we know what Art Bell was pointed at when the signal was received?
	And then how do we get somebody to go back and look at that point to see if it was really
	what we hoped?
	Good questions, Art, and they're all in the grand scheme.
	First thing you need to realize is you can't go it alone.
	You really need the support of the group, and that's where the Feddie League has been
	able to do things that individual hams haven't.
	Because cooperatively, we can answer all those questions, we can solve all those problems.
	Question one, how do you know where you are?
	And the answer is you use a GPS.
	Global positioning receivers are cheap, people use them for hunting, fishing, camping, and
	in my case, flying.
	You borrow a GPS receiver, you carry it over to your antenna, it gives you GPS.
	To amazingly high precision, high accuracy, or latitude and longitude.
	Indeed.
	Or you read a map, but let's assume... I've got a GPS, no problem.
	You've got your GPS, you've got your lat-lon.
	Next step, we identify the position of our various stations using a system that the Hans have been using for years called grid-square locators.
	Now, a grid locator is just six characters.
	It's two letters, two numbers, and two letters.
	Okay.
	It defines your location to within a couple of miles of the earth.
	Okay.
	Actually less than a mile I believe.
	And the grid square is your unique station identifier.
	How do you get your grid square?
	You go to our website and check the alphabetical index, look up grid square.
	It'll take you to a couple of different programs where, in which you plug in your lat-lon, which you got off your GPS.
	Sure.
	It tells you your grid square.
	I am Foxtrot November 1-1 Lima Hotel.
	That's my SETI station identifier.
	Okay, so far, no sweat.
	Easy, I understand.
	But, okay, how do you know where I'm pointed?
	Now you need to be able to, if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, it's easy, because you pick a clear night and you find the North Star.
	You need to know where True North is.
	Right.
	If you're in the Southern Hemisphere, it's a little harder, because you need to find True South, and we don't have a Southern Polar Star.
	But let's assume you can find True North, or you can find True South.
	You had to do that when you installed your seaband dish, because your polar mount had to be aligned on True North.
	That's right.
	So let's assume you've got True North.
	I've got it.
	Okay.
	You want to turn the rotor that you normally use to track the Clark Belt.
	Right.
	You need to turn it so you're pointing at zenith.
	In other words, looking due south.
	Looking at, did you say, these?
	Due south.
	Or looking in a southerly direction from wherever your antenna is elevated.
	Okay.
	Put it at zenith.
	In other words, the highest part of the sky.
	That's right.
	That's easy.
	No problem.
	Next step, you need to know the elevation of your antenna.
	Ah.
	You use a protractor.
	Right.
	Now, from this, you get two important numbers from all of this.
	Your longitude, when you're pointed due south, equals your right ascension, which is the right-left direction in the sky.
	Your longitude equals your right ascension.
	Your latitude plus, actually it's 90 degrees minus your latitude plus your elevation, there's a formula on the website, equals your declination, which is the up-down coordinate in the sky.
	And now the only additional piece of information you need is time.
	You need an accurate clock.
	Well, hey, the Internet is an accurate clock.
	We can get very precise time off the Internet.
	We can, and I have above me a Zeit clock, which is connected, you know, by radio to the atomic clock in Boulder.
	Right.
	I use that for my network, so I have very accurate times.
	Well, the bottom line is, if you know the time, and you know your grid square, and you know the elevation of your antenna, and it's on a north-south line, You know exactly where in the sky you're pointing all the time.
	And there's software to help you do all this.
	Alright, let's say my software detects a signal that it recognizes as anomalous or something that ought to be examined.
	Let's say your antenna was pointing at right ascension 19 hours and change and declination minus 27 degrees.
	Okay.
	I picked those numbers intentionally because that was the location of the most famous SETI candidate signal ever.
	Which we can talk about if you'd like.
	The Ohio State University WOW signal.
	Yes.
	A wonderfully enigmatic signal that seems to fit the profile perfectly, but was not definitive proof for one very distressing reason.
	It never repeated, and it was only observed once.
	Well, gee whiz!
	And that's the problem we're trying to prevent with our global networking.
	Well, gee whiz, doctor.
	According to what you told me earlier about the one signal we've sent out, it could have been something just like that.
	It could well have.
	But science requires more conclusive proof than a one-time event.
	Or the statistician says, when n equals 1, all bets are off.
	It's a sample size problem.
	So we're going to prevent that.
	That's not going to happen next time.
	The next WOW signal that comes along, we're going to get multiple observations of.
	And here's how we're going to do that.
	Your receiver picks up an anomaly.
	Right.
	Let's call it WOW 2.
	Right.
	Your computer recognizes this is an artificial signal.
	And the way it recognizes that is from a combination of things.
	It looks at Doppler shift.
	It looks at the way the signal is changing frequency.
	You see, we live on a rotating Earth.
	And that means that the distance between us and them is always changing as we look in their direction.
	Right.
	Now that change in distance imparts what we call a relative velocity.
	You bet.
	And relative velocity changes the frequency of what you receive.
	You have the same effect when you stand on the railroad track.
	And the train comes toward you, the whistle goes up, and if the train runs over you, the whistle goes down in pitch.
	That's right.
	In this case, it's going to be going up and down in frequency.
	And the computer will track the frequency change.
	And the first test is, did that frequency change match something that is coming from the stars?
	This is the way we, for example, reject from consideration terrestrial interference, because it doesn't change frequency that way.
	We can reject satellites, because they change frequency too fast.
	And somewhere in between no frequency change and too much frequency change is the Doppler signature of an extrasolar signal.
	And we're looking for that.
	The computer looks for that first.
	So the computer finds that the Doppler shift matches.
	That's a really good first test.
	Alright.
	Next thing, there are two ways that the software can run the station.
	It can be running in standalone mode or in networked mode.
	In standalone mode, the first thing that happens when the signal is detected is The computer makes lights ring and bells flash.
	The second thing it does is record that signal to the hard disk, so you've got a permanent record of what you got.
	Right.
	Now, if you're operating in standalone mode, you'll probably check your data files once a day.
	If you don't happen to hear the lights and bells, you'll go back and check your data.
	And after the fact, you'll say, hmm, that was interesting.
	I wonder if it's going to happen tomorrow.
	So you'll listen for the same thing a day later, only a sidereal day, not an Earth day.
	In other words, you don't wait 24 hours, you wait 23 minutes and 56 seconds.
	That's how long it takes the sky to be in the same place again.
	Wow!
	Because Earth's traveling around the sun, you see, it changes our length of our cosmic day.
	Gotcha.
	So now, if a day later, minus four minutes, if the signal appears one sidereal day later, now you say, hey, it's steady, and it's really coming from that star, or that region of the sky.
	Right.
	So even in standalone mode, if the signal is persistent, you've got a shot at verifying it.
	I don't wish to discourage you, Art, but I don't think the signal is going to be that persistent.
	Probably, chances are, it'll be a one-time event.
	And that's where the networked mode comes in.
	Why do you say that, by the way?
	Why is it probable that it's a one-time event?
	Because, let's assume for just a minute that the signal is emanating from another rotating planet.
	Oh, oh.
	And who knows where it's pointing?
	Oh, of course, yes, okay.
	So there's the problem of repeats.
	And let's say, let's use the Ohio State wow signal as an example.
	That was detected on August 15th of 1977.
	They looked again a hundred times.
	It never repeated.
	And here's why.
	How much of a wow was it, Doctor?
	It was immense.
	It was 15 dB out of the noise.
	Holy smokes!
	It was a strong signal.
	And what was the nature of the signal?
	Obviously they got it at least once, so what did they determine?
	They determined that there was a carrier that was Doppler shifted at the right rate.
	And they determined that it was coming because the signal rose in amplitude and then fell in amplitude in a pattern that exactly fit the pattern of the antenna.
	They determined the signal was really coming through the main lobe of the antenna, not off to the side.
	It wasn't equipment malfunction or terrestrial interference.
	It wasn't jamming.
	And because of the Doppler, it wasn't an aircraft, it wasn't a satellite, it wasn't Earth technology.
	It was a steady carrier?
	Yes.
	Now there could have possibly been sidebands associated with it
	We think when we study the signal we see some sidebands, but we're not sure it's on the website again
	People can see the signal and judge for themselves. Where was it coming from?
	It was coming from very near the galactic center in the direction of Sagittarius
	But it was coming from a piece of that portion of the sky where there were no
	especially interesting known stars In other words, it was not pointing at one of the stars on the candidate list for targeted searches, which underscores the importance of doing all sky surveys.
	The nearest stars that it could have possibly come from are a couple of hundred light years away.
	And was it coming in the range of expected frequencies?
	Yes, it was just off to the side of the hydrogen line, right where we'd hoped a beacon would be.
	Oh, that's a wow, all right.
	It sure was.
	But it didn't repeat.
	And the reason it didn't repeat is simple.
	Big Ear, the Ohio State Radio Observatory, saw one millionth of the sky at a given moment.
	Let's assume that signal was transmitting from a similar antenna that only illuminated one millionth of the sky.
	What are the chances that the two antennas are pointing at each other simultaneously?
	And the statistician says, that's easy.
	One part in ten to the sixth squared is one part in ten to the twelfth.
	That's a trillion to one long shot.
	Yet we looked a hundred times and it didn't repeat.
	Hmm.
	We hardly looked.
	It was really a serious wow.
	In other words, if you simply examine the one signal received, what are the odds that It was what we are talking about.
	There are about a dozen alternate hypotheses that have been explored, and with 21 years of follow-on analysis, we've managed to rule out most of them.
	You can never disprove a theory.
	All you can do is assign it a low probability.
	So we've assigned incredibly low probabilities to all but two possible explanations.
	Those two explanations that are still equally likely are, it was somebody else's radio leakage or beacon, or It was a previously undiscovered natural astrophysical phenomenon.
	Either possibility art boggles the imagination, but what frustrates us is we just don't know which is the true interpretation.
	Gotcha.
	All right, Doctor.
	Hold on.
	Stay right where you are.
	Dr. Paul Such, who is the Executive Director of the SETI League, is my guest.
	And he's offering you the opportunity to be part of all this.
	And that means any of you, not just the technically inclined, But any of you, you can be part of all this.
	You're listening to Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
	Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 3rd 1999.
	I have little left care of what I am. It's all clear to me now. My heart is on fire.
	I have little left care of what I am. It's all clear to me now. My heart is on fire. My heart is on fire.
	My heart is on fire.
	Thanks for watching! Please subscribe!
	Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
	Tonight's program originally aired March 3rd, 1999.
	You want to help look, folks?
	You want to help perhaps even be the one to find the next wow signal?
	Dr. Paul Schock is my guest.
	He heads the SETI League.
	He's their executive director.
	And he'll be here for the remainder of the hour.
	If you have questions about the SETI League, getting involved yourself, helping out in any way at all,
	or just general questions about what might happen if we did find a signal, he's your guy
	and he'll be right back.
	Dr. H. Paul Shuck is my guest and just before we go back to the phones, doctor, if you would
	give out your contact information.
	Again, the website is obvious.
	They can go to my website or they can go to your website and get to you easily.
	But what about email addresses?
	What about any telephone numbers or snail mail addresses?
	Whatever you can give.
	Sure, I'll give it all.
	uh... the website of course w w w dot that he needed at the tia leah g ue one word dot org
	for email drop of email to radio at that he leaked dot org and be sure to put your
	postal address in there because my brochure doesn't fit in the party draft
	cc Back to the lines we go.
	First time caller line.
	You're on the air with Dr. H. Paul Schuch.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	My name is John.
	I'm in Stockton, California.
	Hi, John.
	And Dr. Schuch, I just wanted to say that I think this is all just incredibly fascinating, and I would like to graduate up to this someday, but I'm just getting started in shortwave listening.
	And I've ordered my first shortwave radio.
	I'm waiting for it to arrive right now.
	But I've read a couple books, and I'm having a hard time.
	I want to become a ham, and I'm having a hard time finding some information at the entry level.
	And I was wondering about your book.
	I looked at it through the website on Amazon.com.
	Most of the books I've looked at are just way over the top technical.
	John, that's a problem for people starting out in any new discipline.
	Most of the best information for beginners is not going to be found in books.
	It's going to be found in magazine articles.
	That's my experience.
	My book, Conquering Communications, was a college-level text for people in electronics technology.
	It assumes a good bit of electronics background to begin with.
	It's not impossible, but it would be perhaps a bit challenging for somebody just starting out.
	Incidentally, congratulations on that first shortwave radio, John, and welcome to the wonderful world of SWL.
	Okay, great.
	And another thing, I was wondering if you could just give a quick, I heard you mentioning the upper and lower sidebands.
	My radio I specifically ordered with the upper and lower sideband capabilities.
	Very good.
	Could you give a quick definition?
	It's my understanding of, you know, if there's a specific frequency, it seems that people talk about a specific frequency with an upper or a lower sideband.
	Wouldn't that be a completely different frequency?
	Well in fact it is, but if you imagine an AM signal, you've got a carrier on a frequency.
	Right.
	And you've got a sideband above it and a sideband below it.
	What we do for single sideband is we first of all take away the carrier.
	We throw it away because it's wasteful of energy and we can reinstall it in the receiver anyway.
	So now you've got just the sideband above and the sideband below and they're straddling this missing carrier.
	Now if you transmit only the upper sideband, you're transmitting one set of frequencies.
	If you transmit just the lower side band, you're transmitting a different set of frequencies.
	And the reason we can call them the same channel is we refer them both back to the frequency that that carrier would have been on if it were there.
	And that's common to both of them.
	Okay, thank you very much.
	My pleasure.
	There you are.
	A good explanation.
	I'll see you back in the classroom again.
	I remember getting that one early on.
	Well, when I was in academia and considering this steady league duty, I was, of course, I was agonizing over the decision with my wife, and I said, I'm going to really miss teaching.
	And she said, you're not giving up teaching, you're just getting a bigger classroom with much better students.
	That's exactly right.
	Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Dr. Chuck.
	Hi.
	Hey, what's going on Art?
	This is Ben with KFMJ 99.9 FM in Ketchikan, Alaska, and I've got a question for Art.
	Okay.
	I was making sure I still had you there.
	I got a buzz on it.
	No, you're on the air, sir.
	Go right ahead.
	Obviously, I'm on a cell phone.
	At any rate, Paul, that earlier hit, it dawned on me, you said that it was in a region of space that was not near stars.
	Is that correct?
	It was not near any nearby known star, Ben.
	Of course there were stars out there.
	Anytime any telescope is pointing at the sky, there are going to be stars in its pattern.
	And with the Ohio State Telescope, no matter where it's pointing, there's always on average about five stars in its beam width.
	But it was not near any of these known interesting nearby stars that appear in anybody's star list.
	All right.
	Here's a little glitch you might put into your formula.
	How about a relay station that just might have been transmitting to a ship in the vicinity and the ship and the relay station and us all aligned?
	That is entirely possible, Ben.
	In fact, I'm willing to allow that possibility.
	The only thing is, we have to ask ourselves, what is the most likely explanation?
	Now, we know that planets exist.
	We have direct evidence of that.
	We know that radio exists.
	We have direct evidence of that.
	We don't know that interstellar relay stations exist yet.
	We don't have any direct evidence.
	All we can do is speculate.
	All right.
	Onward we go.
	East of the Rockies.
	You're on the air with Dr. Paul Schock.
	Hi, Art.
	Dr. Paul.
	I'm John from New York.
	What was the name again?
	John from New York.
	Hi, John.
	And I'm also a ham.
	Great.
	And we have something in common.
	I think we go back to the early days of satellite TV.
	Good.
	Did we meet?
	No, but I got my first system built from scratch, including the dish, which almost caught my pants on fire, because I used aluminum foil to line it.
	Ah, yes.
	Those were good days, weren't they, John?
	That goes back to, like, the end of 79, I guess.
	All right.
	And even built the LNB at that time, or LNA, I should say.
	What I want to take issue with is the frequency.
	You know, like, we're not transmitting anything in particular other than, of course, I guess we could say our satellites now are, well, you have uplink stations aiming at every satellite up there, multiple ones, not running one heck of a lot of power.
	Well, not anymore.
	Not since the Cold War ended.
	Because when you wage peace, you turn off your high-power radars.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I think what uplinks to the satellites is a couple of hundred watts, I guess.
	Usually, yeah.
	No mega-power, you know.
	But I kind of think that, given the small dishes, like my home satellite dish, the gain at, say, 1200 megahertz or 1400 megahertz is not that great.
	Well, if you go up to, say, 3000 or so, You're getting a lot more gain since we're, well, it's a guess as to what frequency to listen to anyway.
	Well, I think I see where you're going, and let me try to anticipate this.
	I have two dishes in my backyard.
	I have a 3.7 meter dish on L-Band, and I use it for SETI, and I also have a half meter diameter dish on KU-Band, 14 gigahertz, and I use it for watching TV.
	Now, what's significant about this is that at their respective frequencies, the gain of those two dishes is identical.
	Now, I've built myself a little radio telescope using a direct broadcast antenna.
	It may not be powerful enough for SETI yet, but that may be a direction in which we want to go.
	We have members looking in the 10.6 gig radio astronomy band already.
	We have some members looking in the 3.7 to 4.2 gig C band frequencies that their standard TVRO receivers cover already.
	We have many members looking into the possibility of doing radio astronomy and SETI at 14 gigs.
	My answer is, the more the merrier.
	There are no wrong frequencies for setting.
	Okay, but what he did say was that the 3.8 meter dish, which would yield a certain amount of gain at 3 or 4 gigahertz, would yield considerably less gain down where you want to look.
	That's true, that you have more gain as you go higher in frequency.
	But you know, as you go up in frequency, you also have more free space path loss, and they almost exactly cancel.
	You end up being pretty much invariant of antenna size, or of frequency, for a given antenna size.
	When you double the frequency, your antenna gain goes up 6 dB, and your path loss also goes up 6 dB, so you're right back where you started.
	If your sweep point isn't reached someplace, you know, between 2000 and 3000, given of course the accuracy of the dish, you know, if you're going to use a big dish and it's not accurate, and you're going up to 10 GHz or so, It's just not going to work.
	Well, some dishes will work higher in frequency better than others.
	The answer is you use your dish on whatever frequency it works, and hope for the best.
	Yeah, but I would kind of go for the up to about 3,000, but maybe 2,000 to 3,000 I think would be best for the home dish, you know?
	Great.
	If you've got the equipment, go for it.
	This is one technical night.
	Great.
	Really enjoy it, Art.
	Every now and then, I try to do something totally different, and that's what this is.
	West of the Rockies, you're on there with Dr. Paul Schalk.
	Hi.
	Hello, Mr. Bell.
	You're going to have to yell at us or you're not too loud.
	I'm sorry?
	Just kind of speak loudly.
	Okay.
	Where are you?
	Hello, Mr. Bell.
	I'm in Los Angeles.
	Okay.
	And my name is Jonathan.
	Okay, Jonathan.
	I'm calling from KABC.
	Yes, sir.
	My question is probably a little bit off-center.
	I know it's off-kilter from everyone else's question.
	Basically, maybe about a year ago, I started hearing or picking up what I perceived to
	be sounds or signals or voices.
	They seemed to be audible.
	I figured maybe something in my house was picking it up.
	I searched my home and I couldn't find anything.
	I looked about and later on they seemed to be penetrating my skull.
	Jonathan, there are a number of interesting communications possibilities.
	One of them is telepathy, and this is worthy of a lot of study.
	Unfortunately, my expertise is in radio.
	I'm not particularly knowledgeable in that area, so my belief is that I will concentrate on what I know best, and I'll expect others to do the same.
	However, you cannot rule out the possibility that the communication that might eventually come, inevitably may come, May come in a manner that we don't expect.
	Including microwaves, certain frequencies, and all the rest of it.
	It could come in the way he was just talking about.
	Oh yes, this is indeed an area for fruitful further study.
	I just don't have the expertise to work in that area myself.
	Understood.
	First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Dr. Paul Schuck.
	Hi, this is Marty in San Diego, and if the wow signal had been repetitive and determined to be intelligent, Is there a procedure to find out if the civilization is actually still in existence or is it impossible to find out if it's gone like our signals going out and if we were destroyed?
	Marty, that's a very insightful question.
	The answer is there are some very specific procedures in effect, some protocols for what we do if we get a verifiable signal.
	And we can learn a great deal about the civilization that sent the signal.
	But in the case of the Wow!
	Signal, the nearest star from which it could have come is about 200, a little more than 200 light years away.
	And that means that all of our research can only tell us what that civilization was like 200 years ago.
	The only way to know what it's like today is to keep listening for 200 years.
	Okay, thank you.
	Sure.
	This raises an interesting point in that radio telescopes are time machines.
	They look back into the past.
	They sure do.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Dr. Paul Schalk.
	Hi.
	Good morning.
	Good morning.
	Where are you?
	This is Hugh from Tennessee, 99.7 out of Nashville.
	Yes, sir.
	I've got a couple, one question for you, Art, and a couple questions for Dr. Schock.
	Okay, by the way, your radio station there is a 100,000 watt FM, or that's one of those that just fires right out there.
	Yeah, we get good reception.
	Yeah, we're really grateful for it and grateful for you.
	Thank you.
	The question that I have, are all of the antenna, are all of your efforts directed toward deep space?
	Thank you.
	We have the capability to probe deep space, but of course if something nearby flies through our antenna beam, we cannot discriminate against it.
	Okay.
	Second question.
	Art had another guest on, Zachariah Sitchin, who talked about a planet on a long orbit of 3600 years.
	long orbit of 3600 years, that orbit has, I believe, Dr. Titchen determined where that
	orbit theoretically could be.
	And those searches continue.
	an antenna or beam in that direction.
	There have been a number of targeted searches specifically pointing at those stars where
	we know there are planets.
	And those searches continue.
	So far, even though we have a good list, we've got about, what, over 15, 18 different extrasolar
	planetary systems that we've detected now, and all of those stars are being surveyed
	by our friends at the SETI Institute with their Project Phoenix targeted search.
	It's good research, and it will continue.
	So far, they haven't found anything from any of those, but it's just a drop in the bucket.
	Of course, the Project Argus search that the SETI League is doing is an all-sky survey, so we will inevitably eventually scan those stars as well.
	And Dr. Sitchin theorizes, has a theory about the 12th planet.
	So-called.
	And it's in an orbit that would return it to our area.
	In the meantime, we would have no idea where to point.
	This is why all-sky surveys are important.
	If we don't know where to point, let's just point everywhere.
	That's a good point.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Paul Schalk.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Where are you?
	Thank you.
	Where are you?
	Kevin, I'm in Jacksonville, Florida.
	All right.
	And we lost your show at 5 this morning.
	Oh, sorry to hear it.
	Well, me too.
	I wanted to ask, Dr. Short, if one of these signals is picked up and verified by two or three different stations, what happens then?
	Kevin, that's a great question.
	Yes, it is.
	The answer is, once we're really satisfied that we're not deceiving ourselves, well, there's a protocol.
	There's a five-step process.
	When you receive a signal, step one is you run a diagnostic on your equipment to make sure it's not lying to you.
	And step two is you run a diagnostic on yourself to make sure you're not lying to you.
	Step three is you get another station to verify it.
	Step four is you do collaborative analysis.
	And if the system passes, if the signal passes all four of those steps, step five is we tell everybody.
	Because this is not a person-to-person call.
	This message is not directed toward one organization, or one government, or one portion of the planet.
	This is a message that belongs to all of humankind.
	So how would you actually do that, Doctor?
	Would you send out a mass email before anybody could put their censoring fingers on you?
	There is already... Actually, the Feddy League has three different email lists in existence, plus an extensive worldwide press list.
	If something really substantial is found out, we hit all the email lists.
	There are four different lists.
	And we do a hard copy mailing to 750 different media outlets around the world.
	And incidentally, Art, you're on it.
	You're on the list.
	One other question, if I could, please.
	I don't have a computer to write that email.
	Is there an address where I can write P.O.?
	Yes, it's P.O.
	Box 555, Department R. It's Box 555, Department R.
	Little Ferry, as in small boat.
	Little Ferry, New Jersey, USA.
	Postal code is 07643.
	07643.
	That's it, Kevin.
	Thanks for asking.
	Okay, and one other thing.
	This may or may not be along those lines, but it just popped into mind.
	Along with UFOs or anything like that, if they are visiting Earth, would any communication between them be picked up?
	Anything that's transmitting, that's within the beam width of our antenna, We'll pick up.
	We may not be specifically looking for space probes, but if they're out there, we'll probably stumble across them eventually.
	So in other words, a probe, an incoming probe, or a probe headed toward us, Doctor, we would detect the Doppler shift of that if it were transmitting a signal as we would from a planet, only it would be a lot more reliable, wouldn't it?
	Well, the Doppler shift would tell us that this is a probe coming toward us and not a planet orbiting a distant star.
	So we would know that we have something unusual here.
	And you're confident that that word would get out to everybody before they, in quotes, got to you?
	It's more than just me, Art.
	It's a thousand members all over the world, soon to be 5,000 stations.
	Uh, and I hope tonight will help in that regard.
	Doctor, hold on a second.
	We'll be right back from the high desert.
	This is Coast to Coast AM.
	You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
	Tonight an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 3rd 1999
	Welcome to the Coast to Coast AM.
	This is a production of the Coast to Coast American Radio.
	This is a production of the Coast to Coast American Radio.
	Welcome to the Coast to Coast American Radio.
	When the trees are crowned with leaves.
	When the ash undook and the virgin yule, And rised in ribbons fair.
	When hours come, the breathless moon, In the blue veil of the night.
	The shadows fall, and the night is gone.
	When the trees are crowned with leaves.
	When the ash undook and the virgin yule, And rised in ribbons fair.
	When hours come, the breathless moon, In the blue veil of the night.
	The shadows fall, and the night is gone.
	When the trees are crowned with leaves.
	When the ashes fall, and the virgin yule, And rised in ribbons fair.
	When the trees are crowned with leaves.
	When the ashes fall, and the virgin yule, And rised in ribbons fair.
	you Sailing away on the crest of a wave, it's like magic.
	Oh, rolling and riding and slipping and sliding, it's magic And you, and your sweet desire
	You can reach, oh, higher and higher, baby It's a living thing.
	It's a terrible thing to lose.
	It's a given thing.
	What a terrible thing to lose!
	You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
	Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 3rd, 1999.
	Dr. H. Paul Shuck is my guest.
	He's executive director of the SETI League.
	It's something you can actually be part of.
	All you've got to do is check out their web link if you've got a computer.
	If not, write to the address given.
	We'll give it one more time before the show ends.
	And you could be part of something that would change our world forever.
	It never would be the same again, would it?
	Now we take you back to the night of March 3rd, 1999, on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
	all right here we go once again uh...
	Back now to Dr. Shuck.
	Doctor, welcome back.
	Thank you, Art.
	It looks like we're into the homestretch.
	We are into the homestretch, and I would imagine soon the sun should be coming up, if it's not already.
	Okay, here we go.
	First time caller on the line.
	You're on the air with Dr. Paul Shuck.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Hello, Art.
	Yes, sir.
	Good morning.
	Good morning, Doctor.
	Where are you, sir?
	I'm in Gary.
	I'm in Moreno Valley, California.
	Yes, sir.
	Yeah, I have a couple questions.
	How much would the, if I have nothing but a decent computer, how much would it cost me approximately to get set up for this?
	No dish?
	I'm really interested in it.
	No dish?
	No dish, no nothing.
	Okay.
	No dish, Gary, no problem.
	A lot of our members are getting their hands on dishes for free.
	And here's how you do it.
	You drive around to the countryside.
	You look for a house that's got an old C-band satellite TV dish in the backyard.
	And you look for a house that also has a little KU-band direct satellite broadcast dish, one of the little 18-inches, up on the roof.
	Now, if you look closely, if they've got the little 18-inch dish on the roof, the cables are probably cut and hanging off the C-band dish, and it's probably in disarray and quickly rusting.
	So you walk up and down the door, and you ask, would you like me to help you get that scrap metal off your hands for free?
	And nine out of ten people will say, please take it away.
	I object to that description of a seaband dish.
	I thought you might, Art.
	So, actually, you can probably scrounge a seaband dish.
	Now, in terms of the electronics, let's run through the list again briefly, and there is a nice animated block diagram on the website that walks you through this.
	I tried to get on your website, but I couldn't.
	Oh yes, I noticed that our web server is pretty much bogged down right now, so if anybody can't get in right now, be patient and after the program's over, wait a few hours and things will probably settle down.
	Right now, our server capacity is being taxed to the limit.
	And that's good.
	But I'm sorry for the inconvenience, Gary.
	Fascinating subject.
	I'm really interested in this.
	Well, that's great, Gary.
	In terms of expenses, once you've got the dish and you already have the computer with the sound card, here's what you need.
	Feedhorn, let's say $150.
	Low noise amplifier, let's say another 150.
	I'm highballing it here just to get you good stuff.
	Sure.
	Converter, $200.
	You're out of pocket, $500.
	Now you need the 2 meter ham receiver.
	If you already have it, fine.
	I have nothing.
	Okay.
	Ham flea market, $100.
	Does that sound right to you, Art?
	About right, yes.
	Okay.
	So we're talking $600 or $700 and you're home free.
	It's a non-trivial expense.
	We have had members spend as much as $7,000 or $8,000 or $10,000 on their systems.
	You can go deluxe if you want.
	But we've also had people put the whole system together for as little as $200.
	It depends on how much you can scrounge and how much you can build.
	That's right.
	Okay, hard drive space and CPU.
	Oh, that's a good question.
	Oh, absolutely.
	I'm using a 486 in my SETI station.
	In fact, Alex, a 486.
	A lot of people right now are getting nice, high-end Pentium II computers.
	And when they do, I ask them, what are you going to do with your old computer?
	And they say, gee, I don't know.
	And I say, boy, have we got a deal for you.
	You're going to use your old computer in the SETI station because you don't need a lot of computing power.
	You're only crunching numbers.
	You're not playing video games.
	So RAM would be good.
	RAM, um, I would recommend 16 megs minimum.
	Oh boy.
	So a 200 with 64 in a 3 gig hard drive would be good.
	You're way on your, well on your way, you're way over the minimum requirement.
	Okay, do I need a license?
	No, absolutely not, Gary.
	You're just listening to signals from the stars.
	No license required.
	Okay, good enough.
	What about, uh, uh, does, did this beta, The program you're working on to connect to everybody?
	Can you read everybody's hard drive?
	I don't mean to be paranoid, but I'm just curious.
	What's going to happen is that your computer will upload selected signals to a central data storage facility and it's that hard drive that everybody will be able to access.
	So everybody can access that hard drive?
	Right.
	So a separate hard drive like a secondary or something?
	It'll be a whole separate server, yes.
	And finally, instructions to make.
	Can I get it on your website?
	There is a tech manual on the website.
	There's also a tech manual available in hard copy for those who don't have access to the web.
	To get information about the hard copy tech manual, you can email radio at CetiLeague.org and send your postal address and we'll give you that information.
	Or, you can also write to P.O.
	Box 555, Department R, Little Ferry, Small Boat.
	Yeah, I already have that information.
	07643.
	This is for everybody else, Gary.
	Okay, good.
	Hey Art, I love your book, The Quickening.
	Thank you.
	Great show, I listen to you every night.
	Thank you my friend, and take care.
	See you later.
	Uh, Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Dr. Paul Schalk and Art Bell.
	Hi.
	Good morning, Mr. Bell.
	Good morning.
	My name is Steve, calling from Orlando, Florida.
	Yes, sir.
	Listening to you courtesy of C-Band, W-T-N, out of Nashville.
	Hey, hey, hey.
	Yeah, they shut off our feed at 5 a.m.
	for the local news, so I just run over here real quick and get the last hour of your show.
	Well, they have morning shows, yes.
	Yeah, um, I had a question here for the doctor in reference to the LNA.
	Now, your normal LNB is normally a 70-ohm output.
	Is the LNA a 50-ohm output, then, to make it work out with the, you know, radio?
	You mean 70 megahertz?
	No, the ohmage, the actual cable ohmage.
	We're using 50 ohm coax in our SETI systems.
	That's right, that's right.
	70 ohm.
	LNAs and LNBs are designed to use 75 ohm coax.
	Yes.
	We're using 50 ohm coax in our SETI systems.
	That's kind of the standard for a lot of ham equipment.
	And our LNAs for SETI use are designed for 50 ohms in and out.
	But if you only have 70 ohm cable, you'll have a little bit of loss.
	You'll have a little bit of mismatch, but it's still usable.
	The point to make here is that this is amateur radio.
	This is hobby electronics, and things don't have to be perfect.
	You start off with what you've got, and then you improve from there.
	I like perfect.
	We like perfect, too, Steve.
	RGA, maybe?
	Would that be good?
	We're using RGA.
	If your coax run is long, you'll want to use hardline.
	But for a short run, RG-8 is fine.
	And if I run, what would you say the limit would be?
	Would I need an inline amplifier if I was running more than 100 feet from the dish to my converter?
	With 100 feet, I'd recommend you cascade a couple of LNAs.
	We have some amplifier modules that go after your LNA as a line driver if you need to do that.
	What I have is an old LNA, and it looks like it takes an RG-11, I believe, or PL-11.
	Am I saying that correct?
	Your connector?
	You're talking about your satellite TV LNA?
	Yeah, I have an old LNA laying around.
	The actual converter that goes to it was blown, so I think the LNA is actually good.
	Well, that LNA is going to be good for the satellite band, the C-band frequencies.
	If you want to do setting on L-bands, you're going to need a different LNA anyway.
	Oh, really?
	I thought the difference between LNA and LB was the frequencies.
	Well, no.
	The difference between the LNA and the LNB is one only amplifies, the other amplifies and converts.
	Yeah, didn't the LNA take a second converter, though, in your normal C-band?
	Yeah.
	And then you just bypassed the converter.
	Oh, well, never mind.
	I don't want to get too technical here.
	Not a problem.
	Take a look at our website.
	It's all on there.
	And, okay, so that tells you about all the cables, and then I assume that there's RCA connectors of some kind coming out of the converter, the 23-centimeter converter that would go into the analog, into your PC card?
	The converter that I'm using, Steve, uses a BNC connector.
	BNC, okay, okay.
	That's a little stuff I'm trying to get in my head, because I have most of this gear laying around.
	I've got a dish, I've got... How about a scanner?
	Could you use a regular scanner?
	Yeah, we talked about that earlier.
	I've got an AOR3000.
	You could use one of those, for example.
	If your scanner has single sideband mode, it'll work pretty well.
	If it has FM, it probably wouldn't be suitable.
	And the reason is...
	FM receivers have limiters which clamp the signal level, and that's great for listening to FM broadcasts, but not very good for interstellar communications.
	Well, we're in there.
	A 23 centimeter converter.
	Hey, Art, I have a question for you real quick.
	Very quickly, sir.
	The KU band that you send your show out on, is that possible to receive in the normal KU band spectrum?
	It is, and it's not encrypted, only it actually is encrypted in the sense that The simple way they transmit, it's not in the clear.
	It's all digital, so it's not encrypted so that you can't hear it, it's encrypted so that it's high quality.
	So would a D4TV receiver encrypt it?
	I've heard people say that they've had digital receivers that have been able to receive it.
	I don't know what kind they are and I wish somebody would tell me because I'd love to get one.
	Well, gee, I'd sure like to find out, and if you ever do, I'd love it if you'd tell us, because it'd be great to get your feet after 6 in the morning.
	I work graveyard, so sometimes I miss the first couple hours of your show.
	All right, sir.
	I appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	And, yeah, I'd like to know myself.
	I transmit.
	I uplink from here, Doctor, on KU Band.
	Yes.
	To get the signal out of the little town I live in.
	And it is transmitted in a digital format, and I understand some receivers do receive that, but I don't know which ones they are.
	I've just sort of heard random rumors about that.
	You know, and then the people that can receive that actually hear my studio feed before my network gets it and modifies it before it goes.
	That's what we used to do.
	I have a lot of fud with on C-band before it became a mass technology.
	When there were only a few of us intercepting C-band, we used to watch the network feeds and have a great deal of fun seeing what was going on when people thought they were off camera.
	Oh, those were the days.
	Those were the days.
	I still have a lot of video clips I saved That would be very embarrassing for the people if I were to ever hear them.
	I imagine so.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Paul Schalk.
	Hi.
	Hello?
	Hello?
	Yes, sir.
	Oh, hey Art.
	Yeah, this is Perry from New Orleans.
	Hello, Perry.
	Two quick questions, one for you and one for Dr. Schalk.
	Alright.
	Firstly, well, the question to you is going to be obviously contained within my question to him.
	Um, involving spread spectrum technology.
	Now, what I wish to point out is an article I read, well it was actually in a column, by Don Lancaster a few months ago.
	He kind of, the point he was trying to make was that intelligent communication is going to be spread spectrum digital, which is going to, which is Virtually.
	If you're trying to detect it... Well, sir, it's... Wait a minute.
	Hold it, hold it.
	Pause for a second.
	It would be efficient communications, but not necessarily intelligent, because the person on the other end wouldn't be able to discern that it was there unless they have the key.
	Well, let me interject something here, because there is a common misconception that spread spectrum cannot be detected Unless you are in the know, or have the code.
	In fact, this is not entirely true.
	It cannot be decoded, it cannot be interpreted, but it still stands out as something artificial.
	And the proof of that is available on the Study League website.
	We know that the GPS satellites, the Global Positioning Satellites, transmit direct-sequence spread spectrum.
	Right.
	To the ear, it sounds like noise.
	To our computers, it looks like very clearly artificial lines on the screen, which we know are coming from an intelligent source.
	Oh, to your computer.
	In other words, you could detect the fact that spread spectrum was coming at you, but you wouldn't be able to decode it so easily.
	Right, but it certainly stands out as being a clearly discernible artificial signal, so even if extraterrestrial civilizations are using spread spectrum
	we may not be able to read their mail but we can certainly see that it's uh...
	in the post office all way cool
	i think that i would like that i mean uh...
	that it seemed like the point uh... don was trying to make it is column with
	that they give it up guys You're not going to be able to detect it.
	Well, I like Don.
	I read his columns, and I hope he's listening because he needs to know that it's not all that impossible.
	Yes, yes.
	And as I recall, this was my other question to you, Art.
	Have you made any progress in perhaps getting Mr. Lancaster on your show sometime?
	As a matter of fact, I am working on that.
	So, some progress.
	Yes, I'm working on it.
	He is so cool, and I read all of his columns.
	I'm sure you do.
	I do.
	Thank you very much.
	Well, great.
	Thank you.
	Take care.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Paul Schock.
	Hi.
	First-time callers, area 702-727-1222.
	San Diego, because I can't hear it up in the L.A.
	area.
	I'm in San Antonio, Orange County.
	And I used to work with a Paul Schock, but your voice doesn't sound familiar, so I doubt if you're the same person.
	Where did you work with him, H.B.?
	With McDonnell Douglas?
	Nope, not me.
	I was with Lockheed.
	Oh, okay.
	Definitely not the same, then.
	Anyhow, I had two or three comments.
	One, you keep mentioning about the sound card for the PCs.
	Yes.
	For those of us that have Macs, we've already got an audio input.
	We don't need the sound card.
	That's correct.
	And let's see.
	I was going to also ask about the SETI at Home project.
	Oh, I'm glad you asked, H.B.
	There is another SETI program going on right now that's very appealing to people who don't have the radio interest or expertise and don't want to put up dishes and don't have microwave receivers but who do have computers.
	Our friends at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Washington are in the middle of a project that will make Arecibo radio telescope raw data available on the web.
	The idea is you download their software You download a chunk of Arecibo data, and then you become part of a distributed computing network.
	Your computer, during its idle cycles, can sift through the Arecibo noise, looking for coherent patterns.
	It's got some limitations.
	It's still under development.
	They're still having some problems with the software.
	I know this because I'm one of their beta testers.
	But it is coming together.
	And you can find information on the SETI at Home project on the SETI League website.
	Just go to the alphabetical index and click on SETI at Home.
	Right, well that's the main reason I mentioned it.
	I wanted to make sure that other people knew about it.
	I'm really glad you brought it up, AC.
	I have my name in for a beta tester, but I haven't heard anything back from them yet.
	Well, they already have their 100, and they wanted to keep it a small group.
	Yeah, because the neat thing about it is it's a screensaver, so that when you're not using the computer, then it goes off and does its thing about the SETI project.
	Right.
	The only real limitation to SETI at home is you're dependent upon one radio telescope, and you can only see what it saw.
	Right.
	So it's complementary with our approach of trying to see in every direction at once.
	Right.
	I was going to mention also that those with Macs don't have to worry about the Y2K problem.
	I had another request.
	We will see.
	I run an Aries Races information net down here in Orange County every Monday night.
	One of the things that I've been mentioning to them periodically is about the Study at
	Home Project.
	I would like to get information from you people that I could also include in that net because
	it's on the repeater on top of San Diego Peak which covers most of Southern California.
	That's wonderful, HB.
	Email me your postal address to radio at cityleague.org.
	I'll mail you some information.
	Great, okay.
	I got the address down, so I'll be sending you a message.
	Okay, thank you.
	Okay, take care.
	First time caller on the line with time going by rapidly.
	You're on the order of Dr. Paul Schalk.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Hi, this is Mike from Lake Indy, South Dakota.
	Yes, sir.
	I'm just wondering, Dr. Schuch, with all the ancient history and archeology that's going on in Egypt and everything, has anybody ever tried to locate the star charts from ancient Egypt or ancient Greek or Chinese and focus it toward any of these constellations?
	Mike, the star charts from the ancient days are remarkably similar to the star charts of today, and that's because although the universe is expanding, our galaxy is pretty stable in the short term.
	Human history is pretty short, and you really can't see any significant changes from then to now.
	So today's star charts are just as good as theirs, and it's today's star charts that are being used to make the target lists for the targeted searches.
	Okay, I was just wondering, you know, there must be a reason that ancient people You know, kind of tap these things on stone tablets or... Absolutely.
	Ancient people were fascinated with the sky, just as we are today.
	True, but I was wondering if there was any culture, you know, out in these constellations that we might pick up on radio telescope.
	It's entirely possible.
	We're hoping so.
	All right.
	We are hopefully out of time, Doctor.
	So, one last time, give what contact information you would like.
	Sure.
	Email your postal address to radio at CetiLeague.org.
	Or mail your postal address to Post Office Box 555, Department R, Little Ferry, New Jersey 07643, and we will put information in the mail to you.
	Or call the membership hotline from the U.S.
	and Canada, 1-800-TAU-CITY.
	That's T-A-U-S-E-T-I.
	Give the answering machine your postal address.
	There will not be an operator standing by.
	Please give us an address so we can send you something.
	Please do not give us a phone number, because we don't have the chance to call you back.
	All right.
	Gee, what a pleasure it has been having you on the air, and we're going to do this again.
	I look forward to it, Art.
	This has been great fun.
	Take care.
	Thank you.
	Bye.
	And get some sleep.
	I'll try.
	Okay.
	All right.
	There you have it, folks.
	That was Dr. Paul Schock, the Executive Director of the SETI League, with kind of a different plan to look for them.
	Pretty good plan, too.
	As I listen, I get more excited.
	And I hope you did, too.
	And I hope if you're a ham, I hope if you have any technical expertise, and you can lay your hands on a seaband dish, certainly the rest of it is within reasonable limits.
	And then, who knows?
	You might be the one to find them.
	That's it for now.
	See you tomorrow night, same time, same station.
	For now, from the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
	See you on 3830 in a few minutes.

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