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Finding Aliens ‘Only a Matter of Time’, Says Father of SETI
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence was begun 60 years ago by a young American astronomer named Frank Drake; he’s still confident extraterrestrials abound.
LESS THAN A MONTH before turning 30, Frank Drake flipped a switch and started listening to the stars. It was 8 April 1960, and Project Ozma — the first ever SETI search — had begun.
And although 60 years have passed with no clear evidence of extraterrestrials out there, Drake remains convinced that humanity has barely scratched the surface. The search has barely begun, he says.
His influence in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence — or SETI, as it is commonly known — has been enormous. Drake not only conducted the first radio search for civilisations beyond Earth, he helped Carl Sagan design the plaque in 1972 that was attached to the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft, the first of humanity’s emissaries to leave the Solar System.
In 1974, to mark the reopening of the Arecibo radio dish in Puerto Rico — then the world’s largest — he transmitted humanity’s first interstellar message: a three-minute binary signal with a pictogram of DNA, a graphic of the Solar System, and 10 other items meant to…
