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Project Phoenix: SETI Prepares to Observe at Arecibo
By Peter Backus
Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico
It’s a quiet Sunday morning at Arecibo. As I sit by a window in the cafeteria enjoying my first cup of café con leche, I look out at a small tropical garden with showy red flowers. Beneath one of the flowers a small lizard hunts. He is motionless, his cold reptile eyes fixed on his prey.
For the humans, life is a little more relaxed on weekends at the observatory. Most of the Arecibo personnel are at home, enjoying time with their families. Project Phoenix observing starts a week from tomorrow, so we can slow down a bit, too. Suddenly, the lizard is half a body length further along the branch. I could swear that the move was instantaneous--a quantum movement.. Schroedinger’s lizard? Perhaps I need another café con leche before starting work.
So, if observing doesn’t start for a week what do we work on? Actually, preparations for this observing run began weeks ago. On March 19, the Project Phoenix team started the exacting disassembly process in our California lab, where each electronic signal processing component of the search system was carefully disconnected from fiber optic and data cables, bubble-wrapped, then and placed in foam-lined boxes.