029 SMITH JOURNAL10 things i believe
WITH SETI ASTRONOMER AND PROFESSIONAL
ALIEN HUNTER JILL TARTER.Interviewer Chris Harrigan Illustrator George WylesolPUT YOUR FOOT DOWN
Growing up, my dad was my entire universe.
He was an outdoorsman, so I grew up
hunting, fishing and camping. Then
when I was about eight, my mother had a
conversation with him and he subsequently
told me I needed to learn how to do ‘girl
things’. He couldn’t have said anything that
would have made me angrier. After I pulled
out the tears he finally said, “Look, if you’re
willing to work hard, you can do whatever you
want.” So I stamped my foot down and said,
“I’m going to be an engineer.” I didn’t even
know what an engineer was; I just knew my
father had friends who were engineers, and all
of those engineers were male.
‘CARPE DIEM’ IS
A HARD LESSON
A couple of years later my father died. I had
told him I was going to be an engineer, so
goddammit I was going to be an engineer.
I wanted to make him proud. This is actually
not an unusual experience for women my age
who went into male-dominated fields. Years
later, I met with a group of freshly minted
female Ph.D.s. We tried to work out why we
had all made it through the pipeline when so
many other women had leaked out. It turned
out a large percentage of us had lost our
fathers when we were young. So, at an early
age we’d been forced to learn what I call the
‘Carpe Diem’ lesson – to take advantage of
opportunities when they present themselves,
because they might not be there tomorrow. It’s
a terrible way to have to learn, but it’s effective.THE NEW SHAMANS
It was only after I received my engineering
degree that I realised I didn’t want to become
as boring as my engineering professors.
So I began exploring fields that asked
more interesting questions. I learnt how to
program early desktop computers, and was
asked to work on a project processing data
that radio astronomers were collecting from
their 85-foot telescopes. I thought, Wow.
For millennia, humans had been asking
priests and shamans what to believe about
life beyond Earth. And for millennia we got
answers that were wrapped up in the belief
systems of the time. Now with the advent of
computers and radio telescopes, we suddenly
had the tools to find out what the answerreally is. I couldn’t imagine anything more
exciting. That’s how I began working on SETI- the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
We don’t yet know how to detect intelligent
life at a distance, so we use technology as a
proxy: radio signals nature can’t produce, or
bright pulses of light that are so short nature
can’t produce them.
DON’T ASK PERMISSION
After I got my engineering degree I went to
graduate school in astronomy. On my first day,
the department chairman told me and the two
other female students we were lucky so many
smart men had been drafted for Vietnam – the
implication being there was a place for us. I was
so flabbergasted I didn’t know what to say. It
was old-school, and not a lot of fun. I did have
a role model, though: Admiral Grace Hopper,
who was an early computer programmer.
She was famous for saying it’s better to beg
forgiveness than ask permission. I liked that
idea. If there’s something you want to pursue,
you should just do it, because there will always
be people telling you you can’t.>>