Adventures with the SETI Institute

Adventures in Astrobiology
SETI Institute ASSET Program
Cathrine Prenot Fox

I can trace my curiosity about life in the universe to the summer of 1987.  My family went wilderness canoeing in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State (as we always did).  That summer though, during a game of 'tag frisbee,' I got hit in the eye with the offending disc and our vacation was cut short.

I could see fine out of my uninjured eye, but my doctors worried that I wouldn't regain sight in my right unless they blinded both.  I was left with enormous white-rimmed black glasses that obscured a patch over my good eye and protected my slowly returning sight.  Any daylight that seeped in hurt my fledgling eye and gave me, well, blinding headaches.  To add insult to injury, the August heat lay like a thick blanket over the Hudson Valley during the day.  I pulled the blinds, put a fan in the window, and became nocturnal for a few weeks.

At night it was cool, the 17 year cicadas roared like miniature chainsaws, and my father broke out his telescope.  I could see better in soft blacks and greys, and when I looked through the scope I found I could clearly make out planets, stars and the edge of the Milky Way.

"How many stars are there out there, do you think?" I asked my father after a deep look.

My father, an ardent admirer of Carl Sagan, paraphrased him: "Billions upon Billions of stars!  I think the size of the cosmos might be beyond our understanding."

"And do you think there might be someone out there doing the same thing that we are doing, looking out at us?"

He again reverted to Sagan, although I didn't realize it until years later: "If we are alone in the universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space." (Sagan was paraphrasing Thomas Carlyle)

This summer I will be taking a 'Voyage Through Time' with the SETI (Search for Extraterresterial Intelligence) Institute, NASA, and the California Academy of Sciences as part of an astrobiology curriculum and professional development experience in San Francisco, California.  I'll get to learn about how our planet and universe formed, theories about life and its development, and our place in history and the cosmos.  Why don't you read about it in Adventures with the SETI Institute? (Cartoon citations 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5).

Adventures in Astrobiology.  Cathrine Prenot Fox, 2012.

Perhaps if I am lucky they will even teach me how to 'tighten my foil hat so I can get the signal in real clear like.'  Either way, this looks like the beginning of an interesting and exciting Voyage Through Time.  I hope you will come along and join me.

Until our next adventure,
Cat