Sometime in April, if all goes according to plan, an elaborate message consisting mostly of mathematical and scientific data but also including greetings from ordinary citizens will be deliberately beamed to a set of sunlike stars approximately 50 to 70 light years from Earth. It will be the first time since 1974, and only the second time in history, that such a message has been broadcast into space.

        A Houston, Texas-based commercial enterprise called Encounter 2001 is behind the effort. They have contracted with a Canadian scientist named Dr. Yrvan Dutil to construct the scientific part of the message. They have also invited the public to add short greetings. For a fee of $30, individuals can add up to 30 words.

Dutil says that any extraterrestrials who are advanced enough to receive the signal will probably recognize the mathematical formulations in the message and will thus have enough clues to decode the rest. If so, they will learn something about Earth's location, structure and population.

But Dutil isn't so sure sending the message is a good idea. "I'm not comfortable about sending something into space without a social debate," he says.

Other scientists associated with SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) just think the idea is dumb. "Great entertainment, but questionable science," says Dr. Paul Shuch, director of the International SETI League. He notes that the likelihood of contacting any ET's in this way is extremely slim.

But that didn't stop SETI luminaries Frank Drake and Carl Sagan from sending the first such message in 1974. Using Puerto Rico's Arecibo radio telescope, they broadcast a cryptic message containing 1,679 bits of scientific symbolism toward a distant star cluster called M13 in the constellation Hercules. It will take about 24,000 years for that message to reach its destination.

By contrast, the new message will contain about 400,000 bits of information and could reach a sunlike star system in just over 50 years. The new message will be broadcast three times over a period of three hours from a radio telescope in the Ukraine.

CNI News
Vol. 4 No. 24, Part 2 – February 16, 1999
Editor, Michael Lindemann
The 2020 Group
CNINews1@aol.com