Welch, 65, and Tarter, 55, are both trying to discover where that somebody might be. An astronomy and electrical-engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Welch holds possibly the world's only university chair endowed for research in finding extraterrestrial intelligence. Tarter is a research director at SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, a nonprofit organization in Mountain View, Calif. Her project—seeking alien radio signals—is privately funded, in large part by donors from the Silicon Valley computer industry. It seems probable that they are the only two-career couple on this planet making a living looking for life on other worlds. "We are both doing what we love," says Tarter, who holds a doctorate in astronomy. "We are both doing something driven by our curiosity."
Since 1976, Tarter—a founder of the institute—has made her search a full-time job. She spends 40 days a year in Arecibo, P.R., utilizing a 305-meter-wide radio telescope to listen for transmissions that might hint at some life form way, way out there. (Jodie Foster's character in the 1997 film Contact was partly based on Tarter.) Welch is raising funds to erect from 500 to 1,000 radio telescopes at a remote site in Northern California so researchers can further survey the heavens for signs of life. "It's not the stars we'll be looking at," says Welch. "We'll be looking for planets around the stars, with people transmitting." He explains that it seems likely that there are planets elsewhere capable of supporting life. "It seems stupid not to try and answer the question," he says, "if we have the means to do it."
The two were both engaged in that quest when they met while working in the early 1970s on SERENDIP, Berkeley astronomer Stu Bowyer's pioneering data-scanning project aimed at finding extraterrestrial signals. Welch—who designs and builds radio telescopes—was in charge of the facility they were using. "I met Jack because he had the telescope," she says.
Soon after, both ended previous marriages, and in 1980 they wed, joining forces to raise her daughter and his two daughters and one son in their airy home in the hills above Berkeley. Their otherworldly concerns often dominated dinner-table discussions. "The kids would say, 'Can't you talk about something else?' " Tarter recalls.
Though their shared passion drew Welch and Tarter together, it also leads to long periods apart. Tarter makes as much use as she can of her limited access to the Puerto Rico facility. "I don't want to be halfway around the world if anything exciting happens," she says. (It takes a day to run a single star through the tests aimed at detecting transmissions.) Welch, a licensed pilot, frequently flies some 230 miles northeast of Berkeley to the university's Hat Creek Radio Observatory, where they hope to install the additional telescopes at a cost of about $25 million (much of it from private donations) by 2003. The facility will also be used for traditional research.
Not everyone shares the pair's enthusiasm. "If such life were abundant, we would already know about its existence," says critic Ben Zuckerman, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy. "I'm definitely in the camp that thinks they're whistling in the wind."
Undaunted by such skeptics, the couple hope their work will ultimately prove useful on a grand scale. "We have to suppose, if we are optimistic, that other civilizations can live for hundreds, thousands of years, maybe a million years," says Welch. "How do they do it? It gives us more reason for the search." Not that it will be easy to find what they're looking for. "We realize how big the universe is and that this job may take some time to get done," says Tarter. "But if we don't try, we don't succeed."
Thomas Fields-Meyer
Leslie Berestein in Berkeley
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- Leslie Berestein.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
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