Searching for ET
Exactly 500 years after Columbus landed in the Americas, the search for other new worlds will begin. Two large radio telescopes connected to powerful computers will simultaneously be pointed towards an obscure star in the constellation Ophiuchus. This is the start of NASA’s 10-year programme to pick up the first radio signals from an alien civilisation.
SETI, the $100-million Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, is the culmination of three decades of smaller-scale searches that have been funded largely from university grants and private donations. The search will concentrate on the 1.42-gigahertz radiation emitted by hydrogen atoms when the spin axis of the electron orbiting the…
