North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO) Cosmic Search: Issue 4 (Volume 1 Number 4; Fall (Oct., Nov., Dec.) 1979) [These letters in the magazine were found on pages 9 & 10]

Letters By: Editors I think COSMIC SEARCH is one of the best journals I have ever read. All the articles are very interesting. It is a bestseller in our library. Congratulations to you and a long life to this excellent magazine. Dr. Hans-Ulrich Keller Director, Stuttgart Planetarium Germany The third issue of COSMIC SEARCH is the best yet. How do you do it? Your material is so readable and yet accurate scientifically. Professor Raymond M. Bell Washington and Jefferson College Washington, Pennsylvania I am writing for permission to reprint parts of the ABCs section of COSMIC SEARCH. We are enthusiastic, highly-impressed new subscribers to your magazine. Susan Moger, Editor Dept. of Technology and Society State University of New York at Stony Brook The publication of COSMIC SEARCH is an historical event. My sincere congratulations. Florin Gheorghita Atanasie, Romania Congratulations on the launch of a most impressive and timely new magazine, COSMIC SEARCH. Louis Berman Astronomy Department University of San Francisco Author of "Exploring the Cosmos", Little Brown and Co., Boston, 1973 Your magazine is fantastic! Chuck Harrington Hermosa Beach, California It's refreshing to read a responsible publication concerned with such an extremely exciting topic. Robert Morton Los Angeles, California Here is my donation which I hope will help keep your magazine in business. I have enjoyed the three issues you have sent me and am sure they will be worth their weight in gold some day. Paul Simons Sheboygan, Wisconsin I am completely satisfied with the first three issues of COSMIC SEARCH. Although I am only an interested bystander in SETI, I find the articles presented at a level that is comprehensible and very thought provoking. I am a terrestrial microwave link engineer and along this line I would like to see quasi-technical/photo essay articles on some of the larger radio telescopes. Enclosed is a donation for publication support. David M. Laida Sierra Vista, Arizona To Paul Simons and David Laida Thank you very much for your donations. Your gifts are tangible evidence that you want the magazine to succeed. This is of great encouragement to us and we will try even harder to keep going. COSMIC SEARCH I can't express in words just how excited I am about COSMIC SEARCH. Already it has helped me enormously with a major term paper concerning the search for extraterrestial life and I count the days until I receive my next issue! Tom Peirce Hightstown, New Jersey I am in receipt of my second copy of COSMIC SEARCH which I have found to be exactly the kind of magazine I have always wanted to subscribe to. Phillip W. Morris Dallas, Texas Keep up the good work. Charles P. Callihan Riverside, California Let me commend you on COSMIC SEARCH. I know all too well what it takes to get such a publication into production. Nevertheless, everything seems top-notch to me. Your articles, illustrations and other material are right on target. I think there certainly should be a market for such a publication as yours, aimed at the layman. I have found that the general public is much interested in the subject matter but, unfortunately, gets mostly a lot of hokum instead. A hearty huzzah to all of you for your good work with the magazine. I look forward most eagerly to the issues to come. Frank Stilley Glen Oaks, New York Author of "The Search—Our Quest for Intelligent Life in Outer Space", G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1978. In regard to the item on page 35 of the Summer 1979 issue of COSMIC SEARCH concerning "Doppler-independent Selective Heterodyne Radiometry for Detection of Remote Species", the word "specie", as we all know, is coined money. And the detection of remote species (typically with the implicit goal of bringing it nearer) is, therefore, one of the primary tasks of any director of a research group. We fear, however, that nefarious means are herein contemplated. Apparently the authors have in mind (probably illicit) monitoring, by selective heterodyne techniques, of such conversations among high government officials as may be carried by microwaves (for example, from earth station to satellite and back) and may pertain to available funding. The need for Doppler-independence suggests they contemplate including conversations from mobile (automobile and aircraft-borne) officials in their efforts. I trust this explanation will enable you to make use of similar techniques to improve the financial position of the SETI effort! Virginia Trimble Department of Physics University of California at Irvine I have enjoyed your COSMIC SEARCH magazine. Keep up the good work. Eytan Wronker Jamaica, New York A long wait was made worth it when my first two copies of COSMIC SEARCH arrived two weeks ago. It is a magnificent magazine and my copies are already looking the worse for wear after being shown around to everyone I have seen since. While I was waiting for COSMIC SEARCH to arrive I became involved in helping Mr. John Prytz of Canberra campaign for an Australian SETI programme by writing to some of our Federal politicians. Luckily, two issues of COSMIC SEARCH arrived together in time for me to show them to everyone whom I have approached to sign Mr. Prytz's petition in support of SETI. You may like to know that out of 120 people (mostly non-academics) only 10 have not been interested, and 12 have taken copies of the petition themselves to help collect signatures! This shows that probably most people would support SETI if they knew about it. The problem is how to get access to a large section of the public! However, I am going to keep on trying and am eagerly looking forward to the next issues of COSMIC SEARCH. Jane L. Brooks Millswood, South Australia Assuming life exists in space, the new science of exobiology was founded. Now we can go a step further. Since science today assumes a very large number of extraterrestrial civilizations and accepts the existence of extraterrestrial consciousness, I suggest we establish exopsychology, the science of extraterrestrial consciousness. A. Hedri, M.D. Zurich, Switzerland Your interpretation of "E pluribus unum" is literally correct, "One of many". However, it loses entirely the true sense of the motto, which is that we have made one thing, The United States, out of many things, the individual states. If CETI is ever established, even one way, it may help the nations of the earth to become "E pluribus unum". Arthur J. Morgan New York, New York Thanks for COSMIC SEARCH. I love it. Michael H. Elliott Van Nuys, California Your magazine is a great concept and plan. Malcolm H. Bremer, M.D. Houston, Texas Your journal is most exciting in its concept and excellent in its execution. Since you are publishing such a well-done journal on a shoestring, my astonishment and congratulations grow. Your magazine is unique too—a compendium of cosmological thought, with an eye toward developing a humanistic view and expectation in the astro-sciences. Deborah F. Wiech New York, N.Y. I find COSMIC SEARCH fills a distinct void in the overall area of Space Biology. Keep up the good work. J. Richard Keefe, Ph.D. School of Medicine Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio I am a most enthusiastic subscriber to COSMIC SEARCH and am also an equally enthusiastic amateur radio astronomer fortunate enough to have a 25-ft. paraboloid and an antenna farm of yagis connected to low noise 600-900 MHz equipment in the Florida Everglades. We are presently embarking on a three-year program centered specifically on an attempt to receive and process anomalous pulses in this part of the radio spectrum. What we lack in sophistication of equipment, we make up with unlimited time because our equipment when completed will operate 24-hours-a-day with little attention. I thought you might be interested to hear that amateurs as well as professionals have an interest in such work. Robert M. Sickels, Director Fox Observatory, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida Congratulations on your excellent publication. I find your "Off the Shelf" feature extremely useful for tracking down reading material. A. S. Furzer London, England I must take issue with the suggestion that microwave solar power satellites should not be built lest they interfere with astronomical observations. The construction of such satellites would require space capabilities of a high order and would promise a rich economic return (If no return were foreseen they would not be built). A fraction of that capability and return could be devoted to SETI and astronomy in general. A space-borne, properly-shielded receiver would be subject to far less interference from earth than any possible earth-based system. Let us not contend amongst ourselves when we have so much in common, and when there are so many who oppose both the use of space and its scientific study. Doug Hensley Member, L-5 Society SETI is Communication I find your (SETI) work utterly fascinating, and perhaps the single most exciting direction of inquiry I have been exposed to at the Ohio State University. I refer here not to the objective facts or possibilities of your findings, necessarily. I rather wish to emphasize the human communication implications of what you are doing. My major motivation for interest in inter-national or cross-cultural studies has always been that it helps to expand our range of the possibilities for mutual understandings among humans in other settings. The kind of research you are involved in extends the possibilities of human understanding far beyond the possibilities in cross-national encounters, and, accordingly, greatly extends the possible educational value for human communication. From a letter from Professor Robert Monaghan of the Department of Communication at the Ohio State University to John Kraus expressing appreciation for showing a university class in International Broadcasting the O.S.U. radio telescope and describing the SETI research being conducted with it.