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How the search for ET turned into hard science
Ottawa Citizen ^ | 03/25/06 | Jacob Berkowitz

Posted on 03/25/2006 8:25:38 PM PST by KevinDavis

Washington, D.C., is full of conspiracy theories and political intrigue at the best of times. When it comes to talk about aliens in the U.S. capital, it's often about calls for the CIA to reveal what it did with a UFO that allegedly crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in the 1950s, or buzz about frozen alien bodies in the basement of the Pentagon.

But next week in Washington, talk about aliens will be taken with furrowed-brow seriousness. It's not speculation about pregnant women and Martian abductions, but the painstaking search for possible Martian microbes. Not alien invaders, but talk about using space-based telescopes to search for a sister-Earth around a distant sun.

Only several decades ago, the search for extraterrestrials was led by garage-based amateur enthusiasts debating crop circles and grainy UFO snapshots. Many scientists thought it was quackery.

(Excerpt) Read more at canada.com ...


TOPICS: Science; UFO's; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: alienlifeforms; astrobiology; et; lifeonotherplanets; pseudoscience; radio; seti; space; tv; ufo; wildgoosechase

1 posted on 03/25/2006 8:25:44 PM PST by KevinDavis
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To: RightWhale; Brett66; xrp; gdc314; anymouse; NonZeroSum; jimkress; discostu; The_Victor; ...

2 posted on 03/25/2006 8:26:33 PM PST by KevinDavis (http://www.cafepress.com/spacefuture)
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To: KevinDavis

SETI/BOINK could double their output overnite if they'd just work on that infuriating client.


3 posted on 03/25/2006 8:30:20 PM PST by SteveMcKing
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To: SteveMcKing
Oops. That's 'BOINC'.
4 posted on 03/25/2006 8:33:36 PM PST by SteveMcKing
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To: SteveMcKing

Ya had it right the FIRST time!


5 posted on 03/25/2006 9:03:02 PM PST by Old-Retired-Trucker ("Celibacy is a fruitless effort.")
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To: SteveMcKing

I'd been doing SETI-at-home for years, and then along came BOINK (I like that typo, by the way). I never did get it to work, and never got a response to my questions about why. I uninstalled it.


6 posted on 03/26/2006 12:16:13 PM PST by wyattearp (The best weapon to have in a gunfight is a shotgun - preferably from ambush.)
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