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SETI: an Exercise in fatuous Whimsicality?

Among the intelligentsia of our age, few scientists of international note have displayed more preoccupation with the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence than did the late Dr Carl Sagan. He wrote extensively on the subject in several of his numerous books, mostly non-fiction but including one novel, a science fiction extravaganza entitled Contact.

On 3 March 1972, the spacecraft Pioneer 10 was launched from Cape Kennedy, expressly to explore the environment of Jupiter and, en route, to photograph any of the estimated 500,000 or so minor planets that it might encounter while negotiating the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Swinging around the giant planet, the craft's velocity was accelerated by Jupiter's gravity to a speed of 11 km per second sufficient to send it hurtling onward to become the first man-made artifact ever to leave the solar system, never to return.

A few weeks prior to the launch date, Dr Sagan came up with a novel idea, which he put to the project directors at NASA. Would they agree, he asked, to the placement of a small metal plaque on the spacecraft's structure, upon the surface of which would be engraved a message from Earth? In the event of the craft ever being intercepted by a race of intelligent beings, this message would tell them precisely where in the galaxy it had originated from, in what epoch it had been dispatched and - by means of a pair of simple drawings depicting an adult man and woman - what manner of beings had "posted" this letter to the stars. The message would be written in the language of science, on the assumption that any race sufficiently advanced to pluck a speeding artifact out of deep space would have no difficulty in interpreting its meaning.

To Sagan's delight (tempered, perhaps, by a measure of surprise) the NASA authorities welcomed the idea and gave him the go-ahead. The plaque, of gold-anodized aluminum and measuring 15 by 23 cm, was hastily prepared and attached to the antenna support struts. Pioneer 10 was successfully launched and our celestial epistle was on its way. Some 80,000 years from now it will have covered the distance to Alpha Centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor; but it's not going to Alpha Centauri. It is heading towards a point on the celestial sphere close to the boundary between the constellations Orion and Taurus, where there are no nearby stars. In the infinitesimally small likelihood of Dr Sagan's fond hopes ever being realized, it certainly

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