One of my all-time favorite movies is Contact, based on the book by Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer, who popularized astrophysics and cosmology,  in his National Geographic television specials in the 70s and 80s.  Dr. Sagan was famous for saying, “billions and billions of stars”.  Contact's story line was the discovery of an intelligent signal from space by SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,  using the Goldstone Deep Space Center's antennas in California's Mojave desert.  As a kid, I had a chance to visit this research center as a part of the Newport Amateur Radio Society’s sponsored tour.  Pictures of its gigantic radio telescope dishes are all over the Internet now.  The movie captured my imagination, that we might one day receive an intelligent signal from space confirming that we are not alone in the universe.

 

My guest this week, Bob Dixon, W8ERD, motivated by his early interest in amateur radio and electronics spent 49 years as a radio astronomer at Ohio State University working on SETI and supporting the technology that surrounded the project there under the late Professor John D. Kraus,  W8JK.  Kraus was instrumental in getting grants in the 1950s from the National Science Foundation to build a giant radio telescope, called the “Big Ear”  for SETI work. This was well before NASA’s funding of SETI projects in the 1970s.  

 

SETI in still in business today at a number of universities around the World and has for a long time had a “crowd sourced” screen saver, called SETI@home,  that allowed individuals to supply their own computer’s processing power to work on SETI data.   

 

W8ERD has since retired and has developed an interest in mesh networking.  Another great idea and a place for us to focus in order to keep our microwave bands safe from pilfering by commercial interests.  Just this week there is a proposal to take the 3.3 – 3.5 GHz range from amateurs for commercial use.  Link Now is the time to respond to this FCC proposal as well as get your mesh node on the air.