Microsoft's Paul Allen & the search for Alien intelligence

international | sci-tech | opinion/analysis Friday October 12, 2007 22:19 by iosaf mac diarmada 41º23′ North of Equator 2º10' West of Greenwich 4º32' west of Roseline.

"...it's not God's representatives on Earth that worry me, it's Earth's representatives in Heaven..."

Yesterday night the switch was flicked on one of the largest satellite arrays on the planet. Named after Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen the system brings together his dilletentism or whims as a mega-geek & the anglo-saxon culture industrially vital world of SETI and the very murky US involvement in deep Space radio telescope exploration in one project with one stated aim :-

The search for intelligent Alien life.

I'm going to treat today's "system booting" as a piece of tech-news & come at it from the ever reliable anti-trust angle. Thus I hope to raise awareness of the capitalist & philosophical elements of the project rather than spurn the "tinfoil hat" brigade onto anything sillier than they've achieved mostly not by being too suspicious or paranoid but rather by not putting their theories in social or historical context. To that end I'll mix news with a bit of analysis & bit of opinion.

back in '77 they had B&W telly. No-one got the significance of the tree.

Normally I eschew reporting or diffusing "space news" on any indymedia space & hardly ever have I offered material of either "news" or "opinion / analysis" on extra-terrestial biology. Although I've gone on record many times as insisting a suggestion I made years ago to establish a global indymedia portal for biotechnology (long up & running) necesitated two other portals - one for space & one for marine.

The Allen Telescope Array in California to be vague or [Latitude 40° 49′ 1.2″ North Longtitude 121° 28′ 12″ West to be precise] booted 42 of its satelite dishes on the 11th of October 2007. The complete array will see 350 dishes each with six-metre antennas on one hectare of land & is the joint concern of the Seti Institute & the Radio Astronomy Laboratory from the University of California, Berkeley, USA.
It is not the largest such array yet built, nor the largest planned but is remarkable for its stated purpose & what the BBC in this morning's 11h33GMT report termed "novel design".

If you want to keep this as a completely dinky science storyyou can go to the BBC report now & leave this article -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7041183.stm

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Great to have you on board! Now I'm going to do my best to write this off the top of my head & balance the "tech stuff" with the "simple explanations".

On the 15th of August 1977 Jerry Ehman was sitting at his desk as duty astronomer at the aptly named "Big Ear" array then used by the SETI institute in Ohio. SETI is the name for organised efforts under the sponsorship of the US government and the now deceased Carl Sagon of NASA to "search for ET intelligence". As an organisation it has been all things to all people. For some it was waste of time, for others it approached blasphemy, for others it was conduit of disinformation, for some it's been a good research gravy train to jump on without any real fear of investors expecting results. He was the first person known to have seen a 72 second signal come out of the printer whilst the array which consisted of a tray like receiver (not a dish) was focussed at what we vaguely call the constellation of Sagitarius. The signal was at 1420 MHz & displayed several characteristics which suggested intelligence. If you're not sure what suggests intelligence when it comes to extra-terrestials or the supernatural or even dare I say it archaeological structures, I can make it quite simple. You look for knowledge of place, time, & densely packed mathematical information which either (or both) expresses algebraic or geometric axioms or indicates constants or primes. Most of the time astounding intelligence is overlooked for its very simplicity. Very often people try and fake it but can only succeed in the trickery for one generation. I shall treat on that very important issue in a forthcoming "sunday papers" article. It never ceases to amaze people who identify "pure intelligence" how it is overlooked or even destroyed by those who don't see it. Its secrets are thus kept sacred from the profane by its very obvious nature. Thanks to the enlightenment & to be frank silly handshakes you can all recognise "pi" & know what its useful for. & just to thank your lucky stars you didn't have to go to an ashram for ten years to learn it along with so much other stuff, like praying to Mecca a few times a day.
Lest I seem to be going "tin foil hat" or conspiratorial, an example : keen readers might remember the "sunday papers Euler's identity edition" http://indymedia.ie/article/77131 which offers one very beautifully simple example in the illustration. The link might also be at the top of the page on the right hand side. Just cast an eye at the illustration.

For a while the "Wow! Signal" was big news. Not only for the scientists who could see why the 72 seconds was obviously "weird" (& we mostly need explanations as to why it was weird) but also it became big news for ordinary people who by 1977 had flocked to see the movie "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind" which brought Steven Spielberg into a similar relationship with the US space program & the US government which Stanley Kubrick had enjoyed before & undoubtedly resented to the end of his life.

The following years were to see a brief respite in the depiction of extra-terrestial life. All of a sudden they were bening, caring & almost cuddly (as a later Spielberg movie E.T. best exemplifies). This was an important shift in popular anglo-saxon culture whose effects are dare I write it "hard wired into your minds" even now. Naturally the allegorical role played by "aliens" or "extra-biological entities" as symbolic of inner social problems or wider geopolitical problems remained the strongest. The latest movies such as "Independence day" clearly standing in the cultural flow of the Hollywood B movies of the 1950's with their implicit codified warnings of the "red Soviet menace". The actual EBE (extraterrestial biological entity or alien) doesn't get far in our culture. That ight seem strange considering more citizens of the USA than Irish people live on the island of Ireland claim to have been abducted or at least to have had the shit put up them by some type of alien. But the omniescence of aliens in our culture doesn't mean they 've got far. What I'm trying to write could well be exemplified by how the loftiest contemplation of vegetarianism & imperialist warfare combined with what now appears a very low and base conviction of eugenics which was HG Well's book "war of the worlds" has come down to us.

That work which typified the last phase of a "invasion literature" genre which with thinly veiled paranoia dealt with twin obsessions - the threat of China & a unified German Empire proved so versatile through the 20th century. Let us not forget how it passed through Orson Welles' radio readings (the realism of which caused widescale panic as stunned American listeners thought it was a genuine news broadcast not reporting the Soviet nuclear strikes or land invasion they feared on their homeland but the damn red martians taking advantage!). & then to its latest version starring the Scientologist Tom Cruise.

Yet remarkably few people to my knowledge have read the actual text. Therein one finds the martian alien with no digestive tract who survives by absorbing blood (from humans) & feeling no need for sleep or sex, spends its days happily building tripods and flying machines in its pit. A work of excellent fiction by a man of his time has provided so much of today's mythology. If only several million (& I do not exagerate) people would see the "grey alien" who is wholeheartedly believed to sustain its self, whilst not out abducting sheep, doing deals with the US federal government, studiously only hassling US americans [Europeans who report 3rd encounters overwhelmingly report non greys], utterly dedicated to building underground bases, by floating around in jars is nothing more than HG Well's creation with a more humanoid shape & less tentacles.

So even before we set our ears to ET, we know we won't like what it looks like. If he doesn't fit into Roddenberry Star Trek make-up or Scientology L Ron Hubbard's galactic money making scam, it will be a missing link from our dark past of Tara doing battle with a big nasty egg laying insect.

Now I'm running out of steam my punkie friends. I had thought to get so much into this. But yet again I find myself throwing snippets of some of those books I write at you which get no further than suggesting I've read some books. Sorry.

To return to the point, no matter how sincere the cuddly Spielberg years of E.T. were, we trust him more as a documentalist of the Holocaust. Carl Sagen the dead scientist who with remarkable ignorance & poor taste & no small part international snobbery (not the real kind which insists there is a middle class & everyone who has a mortgage or can afford rent is in it now) started the infidious public relations exercise which was SETI must now be seen as one of the greatest idiots of his time.

I suppose given two generations he will be placed in the same terms as that other man whom I ocassionally rib but also praise for his anti-war stance, the good wheelchair doctor of Cambridge. {the ramp is there for a reason} Paul Allen's hopes of his name being attached to the Sat Array which is finally or primarily associated or identified with the discovery of ET intelligence or to give it its official status kicking the ball off on the First Contact Scenario are as vapid as Bono's hope that appearing with Blair & Bill Gates makes one iota of difference to the history of poverty.

Intelligence as I quite probably wrote poorly without even the care to cast a "spellcheck" is awareness of location, time & name where name might be the integer or value assigned to final residual constant or prime manipulation. The residual constant implies permenancy & thus that the time element is, to put it rather less than logically or theoretically: not fleeting.
There has been very little of lasting pure intelligence about Microsoft when its activity and existence is examined in those terms. Where do you want to go today? Well, we mostly went there. It is 24/7 business, information saturation, depleted raw materials, toxic waste, an abuse of the potential of that wonderful invention of CERN - the internet, a perversion of the possibilities -

Information wants to be free.

Thank you for reading, sorry for not writing well, I've had a day off from work for Columbus day, you understand, gets me upset about fakery. I perhaps have tried to be funny all day in comments which will not stand the test of time. I Might have got up noses. But my fingernails were clean. You have no reason to be scared of what aliens, angels, demons, bugs from space, the claw, fariefolk or blobs may be interpreted as saying to you by 2025. (nor that matter what you may think of as skull&bones, illuminati, si fan, greys, opus dei or the priory of blaa, or what the trippie you took ten years ago is doing to your brain.)

To the contrary you have long had good reason to be afraid of what your society identified as intelligence & quite blythely colaborated with in the name of a short few generations of prosperity. Oh! If only we could encourage all the clever clogs of science to look to outer space, and all the billionaires to go there - our future would be better assured.
Why not! Ask your ministry of investment & black budgets to say it's putting secret military industrial complex money not into biotech, human enhancement, chimeras, solar system exploration, harry potter invisibility suits, new viruses.., or even let's get real & spill the beans!!!! .....bales of coke or smack :- to put that hard earned cash (how is it made?) into listening for ET with free open software & chirpy quite clever volunteers who never get too big for their boots, sensible shoes or sandals. First Contact Scenario is very 20th century common era full of bugs, it will surely need lots of patches like any bit of Microsoft. Let's see what they tell us they found in the Andromeda Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy whose nasal passages (or pronouced lack of them) they supposedly stuck their grubby little dollar nails up yesterday.

Strange to think that as tonight in real time by observation of the Moon, the holy fast of Ramadan in Islam ends, that the Andromeda Galaxy was first recorded (to us) as being noticed by 'Abd ar-Rahman as-Sufi, or 'Abd al-Rahman Abu al-Husain, (known in the west as Azophi) beautiful sounding name. He lived December 7, 903 – May 25, 986 []common era] He is not recorded as having a telescope, radio, messenger or a need for anti-virus software. but aside from seeing a little cloud near the milky way & giving it a name he also kept the idea of "pi" alive for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_Al-Rahman_Al_Sufi

Stranger to think the first Malaysian astronaut Dr Sheik Muszaphar Shukor, 35, has become the first Malaysian to fly into space has gone into orbit with Soyuz to the International Space station & is going to celebrate the first "Hari Raya Aidilfitri" end of Ramadan feast in orbit.
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4136,144577,0...html?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Raya

.:. Stranger yet again to use your brain & soul & wonder how does a muslim face Mecca & pray to the Lord of the Worlds when in space?

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as always a pleasure to think you might have read,
& know something now you didn't before, & can correct me where I am wrong, & most importantly are not afraid to wonder more.
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links to our encyclopedia & thence you can find more info.
SETI : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI
Wow! signal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow%21_signal
Big Ear array which got the signal- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Ear
Very Large Array which couldn't verifiy it & looks more like you imagine Sat arrays to look like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Array
War of the Worlds by HG Wells http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds
don't just read about it - read it! link to "our library"
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/36

Exact position of Wow! from BigEar which is now a golf course. Know the right people. Do the initiations. Buy the degrees. Use the Fear. & maybe you'll get to stand on that golf course for that right moment with better equipment & hear it again! ,-) Right Ascension (On the positive horn): 19h25m31s ± 10s Right Ascension (On the negative horn): 19h28m22s ± 10s Declination (Is the same for both horns): -26d57m ± 20m - "This region of the sky lies in the constellation Sagittarius, roughly 2.5 degrees south of the fifth-magnitude star Chi-1 Sagittarii" .

last bits & bobs on Space! - aliens!
"hacker news friends & enemies" http://indymedia.ie/article/76361
PR China asks for Space Treaty - diplomacy!
http://indymedia.ie/article/81711
Lunar Republic? - real estate!
http://indymedia.ie/article/72101