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The biggest and most active hunt for life outside Earth started in 1960, when Frank Drake pointed the Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia towards the star Tau Ceti. He was looking for anomalous radio signals that could have been sent by intelligent life. Eventually, his idea turned into SETI (standing for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), which used the downtime on radar telescopes around the world to scour the sky for any signals.
In 1974, astronomers intentionally transmitted a 210-byte message from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in the hopes of signaling a civilization in the globular star cluster M13. The message contained fundamental information about humans and our corner of the universe, such as the atomic numbers of key elements and the chemical structure of DNA. But this sort of active communication has been rare. Astronomers mostly rely on passive communication — listening for transmissions sent by alien civilizations.
As noted, given the size and age of the universe, and the relative rapidity at which dispersion of intelligent life can occur, evidence of alien colonization attempts might plausibly be discovered. A practical means to overcome the limited span of life of species and civilizations is artificial probes Some theoretical exploration techniques such as the … Read more
An exoplanet (or extrasolar planet) is a planet which orbits a star other than the Sun, i.e. which belongs to a planetary system other than our solar system (the “exo” prefix means “outside” in Greek). The frequency of extrasolar planets is one of the parameters in the Drake equation, which attempts to estimate the probability … Read more
The Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal detected by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977, while working on a SETI project at the Big Ear radio telescope of The Ohio State University. In August 1977, a sky survey conducted with Ohio State University’s “Big Ear” radio telescope found what has become known … Read more
Radio technology and the ability to construct a radio telescope are presumed to be the printmark of technological civilizations, theoretically creating effects that might be detected over interstellar distances. Sensitive observers of the solar system, for example, would note unusually intense radio waves for a G2 star due to Earth’s television and telecommunication broadcasts. In … Read more
Psychologist Carl Jung, in his book Flying Saucers, stated: “something is being seen, but it isn’t known what…. This formulation leaves the question of ‘seeing’ open. Something material could be seen, or something psychic could be seen. Both are realities, but different kinds”. Albert Einstein said, “as far as the laws of mathematics refer to … Read more