At present, only light waves and radio waves can bridge the immensities of space. Physical travel to other star systems is not now and may never be possible. Nevertheless, men are making attempts to find out whether other intelligent beings do exist outside the solar system and, if so, where. The earliest effort, known as Project Ozma, started a few years ago at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia. As the first step in a systematic search, the astronomers began to listen for possible radio signals from the neighborhood of certain stars. Tau Ceti, Epsilon Eridani, and 61 Cygni were chosen as the first targets because they lie within range of our radio telescopes—ten to eleven light years distant—and because they resemble our own sun in age and type and therefore might have planetary systems not unlike our own. So far, the radio telescopes have detected no phenomena that might be interpreted as artificial signals.
The problems involved are incredibly difficult. A background of radio noise—“swishes,” “whistles,” “tweeks”—comes in constantly from the universe at large. Deliberate signals, if they occurred, would be hard to distinguish from the random noise. Even if signals came in and were detected, they might still be indecipherable just as the written records of some early civilizations on our own planet remain a mystery. Egyptian hieroglyphs were meaningless pictures for millennia until the Rosetta stone provided the key, less than 200 years ago. The many pages of text and pictures left by the Mayan Indians cannot yet be read, except for some dates and a few astronomical symbols. Hundreds of inscriptions exist in the Etruscan language, written in an alphabet that resembles the familiar Greek, but scholars have deciphered only a few words.
If we are not able to interpret the records devised and set down by human beings like ourselves, we will not easily understand signals that might possibly be broadcast by aliens from the planets of other suns.
[[X-1]] Wiener, J. S. The Piltdown Forgery. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1955.
[[X-2]] MacDougall, C. D. Hoaxes. New York: Ace Books, 1958.
[[X-3]] Fry, D. W. The White Sands Incident. Los Angeles: New Age Publ. Co., 1954.
[[X-4]] Redondo Beach (Calif.) Daily Breeze, September 25, 1953.
[[X-5]] Bethurum, T. Aboard a Flying Saucer. Los Angeles: De Vorss & Co., 1954.
[[X-6]] Van Tassel, G. W. I Rode a Flying Saucer. Los Angeles: New Age Publ. Co., 1952.
[[X-7]] Cahn, J. P. “Flying Saucers and the Mysterious Little Men,” True magazine (September 1952).