Jill Tarter spends her days listening. What is she listening for? Signals from alien worlds. Tarter is director of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute's Project Phoenix. The institute is a research group devoted to discovering if there is intelligent life on other planets. The project got a lot of attention after the 1997 movie Contact. Actress Jodie Foster played an astrophysicist based on Tarter.
Project Phoenix is the world's most comprehensive search for alien life. Tarter and others use big radio telescopes to "listen" to the night sky for radio signals that may be coming from distant civilizations. (Many devices on our planet, including radios, TVs and cell phones, send such signals into space.) The researchers, based in the U.S., Australia and Puerto Rico, focus on about 1,000 star systems that seem most likely to support intelligent life.
Tarter has been a stargazer ever since she was a child. She remembers taking walks on the beach with her father, when he would point out the constellations in the night sky. "My dad was the center of my universe," Tarter says-and she inherited his love of astronomy. She decided at a young age to study science. "My dad backed me all the way," she says.
Tarter has won fame and awards for her work, but she says the biggest honor is following her father's example. Like him, she wants to inspire young scientists-especially girls. "I travel and talk for that reason," she explains.
After 16 years with SETI, Tarter remains thrilled by her job. Says she: "We may detect a signal at any moment and answer one of humankind's oldest questions: Are we alone?" Tarter is convinced that the answer is no.