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Project Phoenix goes more high-tech
MANKIND’S most sophisticated and comprehensive program to search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence started by using the Targeted Search System, (TSS) developed mostly by SETI. NASA started this sensitive, innovative and hi -tech project ten years ago.
A year later, it was terminated — thanks to the United States Congress — due to budgetary constraints. But with the help of private funding and equipment loans from NASA, the Institute carried on its mission.
The Targeted Search System is the most sophisticated and advanced system in the world to hear any signals from outer space. But it relies and uses computer technology that is ten years old.
Moore’s Law states that computer power doubles every 18 months. The TSS has made 70.000 observations and travelled more than 30,000 miles. In other words, its time to replace it with something higher-tech. Project Phoenix will inaugurate the New Search System, NSS, on November 27th to launch an even more targeted search for ET signals. The NSS will be based on a modular architecture and programmable integrated circuits and initially have the same power as the old one but it will be occupying less than one fifth of the space due to the result of advanced technology in Field Programmable Gate Array, (FGPA), chips. The chips are capable of performing many functions in processing signals like, digital filters and Fourier transforms. With a large donation of these otherwise expensive chips from Xilinx, these FPGA’s will supply the power for three custom-built circuit boards including a pair of commercial processor boards already inside the PC. This added computing power is called a Programmable Detection Module (PDM).
Initially, each of these PDM’s will process 2MHz, a big improvement on the TSS, where the computer systems only did processing of one stage on 10 MHz. The New Search System’s modular design can be enhanced easily to process increased bandwidth with advances in technology and budget funding.
With much increased power, the PDM will complete the processing of an observation in approximately two thirds of the time of the old Targeted Search System, shortening the processing time. It’s increased memory will even allow follow-up analysis of an ET signal making it essential to have identical systems at both sites in order to process original data.
The increased capacity of 100MHz will require fast, reliable and sophisticated computers to configure, schedule and monitor the many PDM’s. In order to serve as the New Search System’s control computers, Sun Microsystems has donated four of it’s top-of-the-line Unix workstations that consist of disk archive systems and large flat panel monitors.
The observations of the NSS for Project Phoenix will end in the early part of 2005 after which it will leave the Arecibo and Jodrell Bank observations to join The Allen Telescope Array. It will be capable of focusing its search on three targeted stars simultaneously, tripling the efficiency. So by the end of the decade many new search strategies and capabilities will enable a much higher and far-reaching search for outer space signals.
More than meets the eye
More than 100,000 people visit the island of Puerto Rico each year to visit the site of the large 305-metre-diametre dish. It transports one to the settings of movies like Contact.
Vehicles are parked near the entrance as any electronic activity generates radio waves that might interfere with the sensitive listening power of the dish. It is a steep climb to behold the technological wonder but a very entertaining one.
Models of the Sun and the nine planets are made in exact proportion to their sizes along the way, enabling the visitor to visualize the solar system on the ground.
Inside the visitor centre, exhibits titled, “More than meets the eye,” educate people on the aspects of the different kinds of scientific research carried out at Arecibo including, interactive displays in which one can explore the solar system and information about many other subjects in astronomy and interstellar chemistry. Well-informed science students from the University of Puerto Rico are also present in case of further information and assistance.
The observatory shows a film titled, “A day in the Life of Arecibo Observatory,” taking the visitor on an inside tour into the workings of the systems and what its like to be a 24-hour listener for interstellar signals including telescopes that help you span the Universe.
Maybe, just maybe there’s an observatory like this somewhere in the cosmos where an ardent and enthusiastic intelligent being is also looking through a telescope for signs of life elsewhere.
The writer
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