(10440) Tue 15 Sep 92 12:17p
By: David Stager
To: All
Re: United Nations/aliens
St:
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@MSGID: 1:125/7.0 2ab61ab2
By PETER JAMES SPIELMANN
        UNITED NATIONS -- After more than 30 years of listening to radio waves
from outer space for greetings from an alien civilization, scientists are
planning to turn to the United Nations for guidance on how to answer.
        Dozens of times, scientists have picked up radio waves matching the
expected signature of a message from space. But these have not been confirmed
as genuine contacts because they were fleeting and unverifiable.
        With new NASA equipment joining the search next month, radio
astronomers believe they will ultimately be able to confirm that a future
transmission is a sign from a distant planet.
        Radio astronomers and engineers involved in the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, commonly called SETI, this month began
consulting with their colleagues in all scientific disciplines for suggestions
on what the reply to aliens should be.
        After sifting and winnowing their own ideas, the scientists plan to
seek a decision from the U.N. General Assembly's Committee on the Peaceful Uses
of Outer Space.
        "The basic thinking all along is that this decision ought to be put
into the hands of the United Nations," said John Billingham, head of the SETI
project at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.
        In a "white paper" now being circulated to space scientists worldwide,
one key principle is that Earth should reply with one voice, on behalf of all
humanity, rather than individual states sending a response, according to
scientists familiar with the document.
        "We have always considered this not just a U.S. question, but an
international question," Billingham said. "Everybody, in some way or another,
should be involved in it."
        Officials at the U.S. State Department, speaking on condition of
anonymity, say they are leaving this initiative to the scientists.
        The space scientists plan to refine their ideas at international
meetings in April and October of 1993, and then bring them to the U.N.'s space
committee.
        The 53-nation Committee of the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space has in the
past drafted five international treaties on the peaceful use of outer space,
and three internationally accepted declarations of legal principles.
        The scientists would have to find a sponsor nation to bring their ideas
before the U.N. committee. Then, Billingham said, the committee could accept
wide-ranging testimony from scientists, historians, philosophers and political
delegates to shape Earth's reply to a message from another planet.
        The nature of the reply may well depend on the complexity of the
transmission received, Billingham said. That transmission could range from
simple radio or radar "noise" from another world to a purposeful message
greeting other planets.
        Billingham and some of his colleagues think the world may need a reply
sooner than most people might think. The United States, Russia, Australia,
Argentina, France, India and Japan are all running SETI searches, with ever
more sophisticated equipment being brought on line.
        Receivers have picked up signs that bore all the earmarks of an
intelligent signal from space about 60 times -- except they were brief and
could not be reacquired and confirmed, said Frank Drake, the man who in 1960
launched Project Ozma, the first SETI search.
        He still wonders if the receptions were simply a glitch in the
equipment, or if they actually detected a transient signal from space.
        Drake thinks there is no need to rush a reply back to the stars.
        "You would build a large enough (radio telescope) system to capture
those communications and spend years, perhaps, learning what that civilization
is all about. By then, the answer would be obvious," Drake said.
        "The one thing we could put in our reply is that we know of their
existence," he said.


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