The Inspiration
In 2009, at the TED Conference in Long Beach, CA, Jill Tarter made a wish and challenged the conference attendees: “I wish that you would empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company.” Sitting in that audience, I was captivated by Dr. Tarters talk – she is the real-life astrophysicist upon whom Carl Sagan’s book, Contact , is based. I wondered how I might contribute to this great challenge. Listening to Jill’s TED Wish talk, I wondered how my hobby project might expand to engage children “…everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company.” Well, all you have to do is build a bunch of experimental systems and put them in classrooms around the world. But, it turned out there were some big challenges, both technical and organizational. The introduction of the ERGO Energetic Ray Global Observatory represents a first step in achieving that goal.
–Tom Bales