Searching for aliens

Jill Tarter is a strong advocate of the scientific search for extraterrestrials.

Of all the sci-fi films and programmes to have hit the screens since 1902, when George Melies' celebrated Le Voyage de le Moon showed chicken-headed selenites greeting the intrepid Earthling explorers, Contact stands apart.

There've been plenty of low-budget sci-fi films that have saved on costumes and makeup by aliens assuming human form, or films featuring benign aliens - think of the loveable ET.

There have been even those in which Earth is, for once, not under attack by an advanced alien civilisation - in 2001: A Space Odyssey it is superior aliens who help primitive humans to develop technological skills.

What makes Contact special, even nine years after its release, is simply that it is more real.

To begin with, it is based on a book written by a real scientist, inspiring cosmologist Carl Sagan; the locations are real - the 305m radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and the Very Large Array in New Mexico; and its heroine, Ellie Arroway, played by Jodie Foster, was modelled on lively radio astronomer, Jill Tarter.

Tarter, who was selected by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential and powerful people in the "Scientist and Thinker" category, is in New Zealand for the Dunedin International Science Festival.

She has been for decades a world leader and strong advocate for the scientific search for evidence of life on other worlds, and is Director of the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Institute (Seti).

Was her screen alter ego, Ellie Arroway, an accurate portrayal and why, when it comes to aliens, is the science so much more compelling than the fiction?

"Fundamentally I think the character was Carl himself, but there were a lot of situations the character faced which I experienced trying to break into science - and my dad did die when I was 12. That turns out to be not uncommon for women my age who ended up in science and engineering.

"For most of us, our fathers were the central figures and the motivators of our lives, and when we lost them we got a rude lesson in missed opportunities.

"But we were left with just enough stubbornness and extra determination that we wanted to do something that would make our fathers proud, and that allowed us to somehow turn a deaf ear to all this cultural programming we were getting about not needing calculus or physics because we were just going to have babies and all that nonsense." (Tarter is also widely respected for her promotion of scientific literacy particularly among girls and women.)