E.T., phone Earth: the search for extraterrestrial intelligence goes on, at private expense.

• Author: Larson, Elizabeth

ON COLUMBUS DAY 1992, THE National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched a much-expanded Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), an attempt to locate civilizations on other planets by picking up their radio signals. A year later, looking for some token budget cuts, Congress voted to eliminate SETI. But the program lives on as Project Phoenix, run by the SETI Institute, a private, non-profit foundation in Mountain View, California.

SETI uses huge radio antennas, sophisticated digital receivers, and computers to scan the radio-frequency spectrum in an attempt to detect non-random signals. The detection of such patterns would indicate the existence of a technically advanced civilization. The program was interrupted less than a year into its expected 10-year life when Congress eliminated its $12.3-million annual budget.

Within three months, the SETI Institute had raised $4.4 million--more than half of the $7.3 million needed to keep the project on schedule through mid-1995. Among the major donors (in the million-dollar range) are David Packard and William Hewlett of the Hewlett-Packard Corporation; Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and founder, chairman, and CEO of Asymetrix Corporation; and Gordon Moore, co-founder and chairman of...