Listening for sounds

Lh LiL

ther worlds, with civiliza-
tions more advanced than our

Own, may well be trying to get

in touch with our planet, Power-
ful radio transmitters, millions
of miles away in space, may
be sending repeated messages
Condensing in few-second bursts
the total Scientific and technical
knowledge of epochs,

NO luck.

Reception and translation of
this information may shorten by
Centuries mankind’s conquest of
nature, The space age has re-
newed Speculation about other
inhabited worlds, Less than four
Centuries ago Bruno was burnt
at the stake by the Inquisition
for believing that there were

Countless worlds throughout the
UWMiverse,

Most Scientists today think that
it is most unlikely that our solar
System of planets is unique,
There js experimental evidence
for the existence of other planets,

ae own galaxy, the Milky Way,

ains tens of millions of stars
and it is probable that at least
Some of them have planets old en-

ough to have developed civiliza-
tions,

este are thousands of mil-
ater of such galaxies so the
les €r of possible worlds is at

aS great as that of the

Sci A :
Clence-fiction writer’s imagi-
Nation,

‘ Can they get in touch with us
we with them?

radi: Americans turned a 90 ft,
Siete elescope on two relatively
Sy as Stars; chosen because
- ere similar to our own sun,
centimennn transmissions at 21
hydro etres — the wavelength of
‘ ie — a figure that would
Shvbioth known to any scientist
er planet — but with

pues is understandable,
Similar. no reason why all stars
Mia to the sun should have
crs b and even if these two
appened to have planets

Born in slavery
109 years ago,
now she’ll vote

A! 2:45 p,m, on July 27 a
ah arrived at Quincy,
ee from Chattahoochee,
- S away, anda 109-year-
Be Woman was helped from
Berar by two Congress of
an Equality (CORE)
= ak She had been born
ae avery, she told them,
hought it was abouttime

that she Should register and
Vote, :

aoe in her neighborhood
ae fea. they were afraid and
ae made them promise .
: : She came back alive,
sa 0° would register, Upon
3 Ning to Chattahoochee,
Was confronted by a

S
Rent Sroup of anxious
€ighbors,

38

“There

She Was nothing to it,”

4Ssured them, Her
daughter, who is 90 years old,
ceane granddaughter im-
ister « Y promised to reg-
i € following Monday,
ain) Same day, from 9
stream 5 p.m, a continuous
at they at Negroes lined up
one egistrar’s office, with
emg registered every

they may not have developed
intelligent life,

fen if there were civilization
there, they might not yet have
reached the necessary level for
radio transmission or may even
have passed the golden age of
their technical achievement,

And even if the planetary sys-
tems of those two stars were
highly developed there is no rea-
son why our small sun and solar
system should be the object of
attention at the same time as the
Americans were trying to get
in touch,

Successful communication is
rather like a man entering a
darkened room at random once
a year and switching on the light
for ten seconds, The chance of
him seeing a mouse that only
pops up out of the floorboards,
also at random for ten seconds
every year, is remote,

This is one reason why
OZMA, the U.S, program, has
produced no results to date,
Success depends on investigating
tens of thousands of stars in
turn for one radioing our system
at this moment and direction,

Another approach has been
suggested recently by a young
Soviet astronomer, Nikolai Kar-
dashev, He suggested powerful
radio transmitters to broadcast
information in all directions in
space, andthinks the other worlds
may be doing this already,

The principle is like the May

_Day broadcast call of a ship in-

distress,

Are sufficiently powerful
transmitters possible? Kardash-
ev suggests three stages of tech-

nologically developed cosmic
civilizations,

First, civilizations having a
level similar to that of the earth,

The annual increase in energy
used by mankind is increasing by
three to four percent a year, In
3,200 years the energy consumed
would be equal to that now radiat-
ed by the sun, This is the second
stage,

The third stage is a civiliza-
tion using the power resources
of a galaxy,

But more advanced civiliza-
tions may spend part of their
enormous energy resources in
telling the universe about their
achievements, Kardashev thinks
that we should be able to re-
ceive a second stage cosmic
radio station from up to 10 mil-

from other planets —

The giant radio-telescope
lion light years away, Third stage

civilizations should be able to

transmit throughout the entire
observable universe,

Cosmic radio stations will be

affected by interstellar hydrogen

clouds, equipment noise.and so
on, but a search on the centi-
metre and 10 centimentre wave-
lengths would be most hopeful,

Transmission language will not
be an unsuperable difficulty, The
sort of machine languages devel-
oped for use in computers based
on mathematical logic would be
universal,

Two-way communication would
be most difficult, If we were
lucky enough to find a civiliza-
tion “only” 100 light years away
it would take 200 years for a
question to be transmitted and

Honest film, bears imprint of

ollywood rarely runs off the
well-worn tracks these days,
So it is worth while giving quite
a cheer for Love With The Proper

Stranger.

Not that there’s anything new
to the screen about the basic sit-
uation — girl searches for boy
who “got her into trouble;” asks
him. to help her get an abortion;
realizes she can’t go through
with it after all,

FILMS

What’s unusual and refreshing
is the modest and intellingent
approach of the director, Robert
Mulligan, and screen writer
Arnold Schulman, and their clear
eyed respect for youthful good

sense,

The working backgrounds of the
two youngsters in the drama —
both of whom come from Italian
immigrant families — are firmly
established in the first few min-
utes of the film.

The boy (Steve McQueen) joins
a clamoring crowd of out-of-work
fellow musicians at the Union Hall
each morning, in the hope of a
fill-in job at a wedding or asmall

time hop.

The girl (Natalie Wood) is a

-sales assistant at a pet store. At

the most crucial moments in her

life she has to remember to pull
herself together so that she won’t
be late for work,

Each in a different way puts
up a hard front against life, Their
defensive shells make itimposs-
ible for them to be open and
straight-forward with each other,
Yet honesty is what the film is
about — two young people strugg-
ling to pick a clean and honest

way through the contradictory .

emotional pressures that spring
from family, work, sex and love,

Steve McQueen confirms my
long held opinion that he is one
of the most interesting and at-

tractive of younger Hollywood
actors,

Natalie Wood, although a bit
too sweet and actressy, makes
a very good stab at a difficult
role,

The Italian families are de-
lightfully characterized — never
just types, but real people, It’s
quite an achievement to have
three completely different Italian
mommas, not exaggerated or
over sentimentalized, each very
much a personality in her own
right,

The faults of the film (like its
qualities) have the mark of youth

Herschel Bernardi, Steve McQueen and Edie Adams in a scene from

7 ho; y «
at Jodrell Bank.

answered, The speed of light,
which is also the speed of radio
waves, is a limiting factor,

Artificial radio signals would
be fairly easily distinguished
from the natural ones that radio-
telescopes like Jodrell Bank are
now regularly receiving and ana-
lyzing,

Two radio sources probed by
the Americans last year andalso
by Kardashev may prove to be
artificial,

The centre of our galaxy andthe
Andromeda nebula may be fruit-
ful places for radio-telescopes
to point to, Such efforts may
be the first to end man’s isola-
tion from the other civilizations
of the cosmos,

—John Moss

youth

— the camera lingering about
too long, for instance — and,
more damaging, the fanciful sun-
shine ending that is quite out of
key with the rest of the film,

Robert Mulligan, however, al-
though young, has quite a fist-
ful of films to his credit, in-
cluding the lyrical anti-racist
film “To Kill a Mocking Bird,”

}

And especially because of this,
I feel I must ask him why he
had to single out a Negro boy
actor, in a situation that wouldn’t
have mattered one Way or ano-
ther, for one of the very few
mean roles in the film,

: Nina Hibbin

ais
ii
}

“Love with the Proper Stranger.”

September 4, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9