How Paul Allen saved the American search for extraterrestrial intelligence

On Monday night, Microsoft's co-founder, Paul Allen, had died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at the age of 65. At the time of his death, Allen was the 47th richest person in the world, with a net worth of $ 26 billion. In the last decades of his life, Allen has used his wealth for an impressive range of business and philanthropic interests. In addition to owning the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers, Allen founded a Brain Science Institute, an Institute for Research in Artificial Intelligence, and Stratolaunch Systems, which explored private spaceflight.

Yet one of the areas of research where Allen had the greatest impact is also the one he's talked about the least: the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Indeed, Allen almost saved the US SETI alone by donating more than $ 30 million to scientists looking for intelligent radio signals in the cosmos.

The early years of SETI in the United States were mainly defined by intermittent research funded by public funds, such as the program funded by the National Science Foundation at Ohio State University who discovered the Wow! signal, or university endowment, such as the Harvard Sentinel Project. By the early 1990s, however, many of the early SETI programs had come to an end. The best hope of detecting extraterrestrial information seemed to be NASA's first foray into SETI, the microwave observing program, which began its observations in 1992.

Less than a year after the start of NASA 's SETI program, he was killed by members of Congress who did not want to waste money on the "great Martian hunt". The SETI Institute, a nonprofit organization founded in 1984 by radio astronomer Jill Tarter, was not going to let SETI die at the hands of some cynical Congressmen, but he also understood that the only hope for him was the fact that he was not the only one. The future was research funded by private funds.

Fortunately, Barney Oliver, one of the first supporters of the SETI Institute, founded and led the Hewlett Packard Laboratories. So, in 1993, Oliver called Bill Hewlett and David Packard from Hewlett Packard, Gordon Moore, founder of Intel, and Paul Allen to ask for their support.

"It was probably only a few hours on the phone in Barney that each of them would commit a million dollars a year for the next five years," Seth Shostak told me. Principal astronomer of the SETI Institute. "I'm not sure that any of them was particularly interested in SETI, but they were interested in everything Barney thought was a good idea. "

This $ 20 million commitment funded Project Phoenix, a SETI program implemented from 1995 to 1998. For three years, Project Phoenix rented time on the Parkes radio telescope in Australia and on the Green Bank telescope in West Virginia. search for 800-star signals within 200 light-years of the Earth.

"There is no doubt that Paul saved the American SETI."

The Phoenix project was better than nothing, but SETI's astronomers understood that if the search had a chance of success, she would need her own SETI radio telescope. Or better yet, a whole range of small telescopes, which together produce a broad view of the sky and can target hundreds of stars at a time. This was the subject of a series of meetings organized by the SETI Institute between 1998 and 2000 to chart the next twenty years of SETI research.

Under Tarter's leadership, the meeting participants put together a telescope network of 350 radio telescopes. There was just one question: who would pay the $ 25 million bill? Knowing that Allen had helped revive SETI with Project Phoenix a few years earlier, Tarter contacted him and asked him if he could again use a money-saving liferaft. In 2000, Allen had committed $ 25 million for the construction of a network of telescopes in northern California, the first specially built center for SETI in the United States.

"We were very enthusiastic at the institute," said Shostak. "Before the telescope network, we had to use other equipment. It's like being a doctor and every time you have to do some research, you have to borrow someone's microscope from someone else. There is no doubt that Paul saved the American SETI.

However, the cost of building a network of 350 telescopes was much higher than what the SETI Institute had planned. By the time Allen's telescopic network came online in 2007, only 42 telescopes had been built and Allen's donation had been widely used.

Shostak said he was there for the dedication ceremony during which Allen "pressed the button" to turn on the system. He said that he had briefly had the opportunity to talk to Allen about what had fueled his interest in SETI. According to Shostak, Allen would have told him that it was because he was interested in finding new ways to use the technology.

"I thought it was just a topic of discussion, but Allen's entire career confirms it," Shostak said. "The painting was in line with this philosophy."

Over the past decade, the Allen Network Telescope has been as successful as it has been in setbacks. He analyzed 200 million signals emitted by thousands of stars, studied unusual radio broadcasts at high energy and even scanned the asteroid Oumuamua in the form of "spliff" to look for signs of intelligent life. The radio telescope, however, experienced a major setback in 2011 when it had to close due to a lack of funding. It was put back online the following year with a donation from Qualcomm's co-founder, Franklin Antonio.

Shostak said that Allen never went back to the SETI institute or radio telescope that bears his name in the decade before he died. Despite this, however, Allen has never lost interest in the project or the prospect of communicating with extraterrestrials.

"Scientists are optimistic because they think that if they have better instruments deeper or on more frequencies, there should be civilizations that broadcast," Allen said in an interview with Discover the magazine shortly after the start of observations. "I think everyone would admit it's a long shot, but if that happens …"