Project Cyclops was not deployed and, with an estimated cost of $6 billion (roughly equivalent of what the USA paid for three  months of the Vietnam War), was rejected. But the report indicated that the technology does exist for an effective search for ETI, and that were such a system tried for a given period without success its negative findings would count as a reasonable falsification of pluralism. Some of the leading ideas of Project Cyclops were to be employed in NASA’s High Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS), which was formerly referred to as the Microwave Observing Project (MOP).

NASA’s High Resolution Microwave Survey and Project Phoenix

On Columbus Day in 1992 NASA scientists began a search for ET radio signals. The search was originally scheduled to run for ten years with an upper budget limit of $100 million dollars. It was described as part of the US commemoration of the discovery of America, looking towards its future as well as its past. The search was to be conducted primarily by means of radio telescopes and involved two complementary teams. The first team, based at the Ames Research Centre, were to employ a ‘Targeted Search’ to examine at high sensitivity about 800 stars like our Sun which are located within 80 light years from Earth. It began with a concentrated search targeted on a star in the Constellation of Opiuchus. Using the largest antennae available, including the 305-metre dish at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, each star was to be carefully scrutinized on frequencies between 1GHz to 3GHz in the microwave band, which would include the Waterhole. Radio telescopes at various sites throughout the world were to be programmed to follow each designated star for several minutes at each frequency while the ‘targeted search analyzer’ was to search for complex signal patterns. The assumption underpinning the Targeted Search was that intelligent civilizations are so common throughout the universe that our nearest neighbours may be within 80 light years of the Sun.

The second search was based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, California, employing a 34-metre radio telescope at the Goldstone complex of telescopes in the Mojave Desert, California. This was known as the ‘All Sky Survey’. It was to be less sensitive than the Targeted Search but the sacrifice of sensitivity allowed greater sky coverage. It assumed a smaller number of communicating intelligences, although Frank Drake saw this as the most likely to succeed. While sacrificing sensitivity, the All Sky Survey was intended to employ a search covering 99 per cent of the heavens ignored by the Targeted Search. This was a much wider search, using three 34-metre dishes of the world-wide NASA Deep Space Network; it was intended to tune into frequencies that cover almost the entire ground-based (1–10GHz) microwave window: hence the original title Microwave Observing Project (MOP).

Thus conceived, the dual project had an advantage over many of its prede-cessors because recent computer technology has made it possible to listen to

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many frequency channels simultaneously. Data from 20 million frequency channels were to flash through digital processors and several dozen of the world’s most powerful super-computers (including the CRAY X-MP/18) were required to match the speed of this hardware, completing tens of billions of mathematical computations each second. Multi-Channel Spectrum Analysers (MCSA) will process 25 billion bytes of data each second, and were to be programmed with signal-recognition algorithms to  differentiate potential ET signals from the confusing background of terrestrial and cosmic noise, recording only the most promising data for follow-up analysis. Early tests gave grounds for optimism regarding the system’s ability to isolate signals from the background noise. On trial runs, signals from the Ulysis spacecraft were picked up as it approached Jupiter. It was to be the most comprehensive search ever. In the first minute of its operation it had searched more than all previous searches combined. The scale of the search can be appreciated when we consider that every second the NASA instruments could process information equivalent to several Encyclopedia Britannicas. The SETI Continuous Wave Detector can make 1 billion tests per second, which is equal to scanning the entire Encyclopedia Britannica each second to pick out a significant three-word phrase.

Among the spin-offs from this research could be the data-reducing hardware and software which could initiate a revolution in computer design. So far NASA searchers have devised silicon chips that can analyse millions of frequencies simultaneously, and software that can search for different kinds of  signals, including continuous tones, pulses, or combinations of both. Algorithms, developed for the detection of ET transmissions, may have other applications including tests for the sensitivity of computer searches in the diagnosis of breast cancer.

Unfortunately the HRMS suffered a serious setback in the 1993 US budget cuts when Congress killed off the All Sky Survey when it was less than a year old and had only covered one-thousandth of the intended search. The ‘flying saucer’ image of SETI, however misguided, encouraged politicians to withdraw financial support for the HRMS. It is fashionable among ‘serious’ people – who include politicians and members of the media who are close to them – to portray beliefs in the existence of ETI as a manifestation of gullibility, superstition and lack of education. However, the Targeted Search managed to escape the cuts and survived, as the SETI Institute, which is responsible for it, is independent of the government and was able to solicit outside funds. It consequently survived, and $4.4 million was initially raised for the Targeted Search, with substantial backing from four US high-technology entrepreneurs, including David Packard and William Hewlett, founders of Hewlett Packard, Gordon  Moore, chairman of Intel and Paul Allen of Microsoft. Arthur C. Clarke also made a ‘significant’ donation (Anon, 1994). Its current name is ‘Project Phoenix’. Throughout 1995 and 1996 Phoenix continued, committed to a search of 1,000 nearby Sun-like stars. The SETI Institute was, however, able to use the $58 million of government investment in equipment. Even in its reduced size it is still the most

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