First Contact: Will We Ever Hear From Aliens?

The Allen Telescope Array in California. Photograph: Ho New/ Reuters

From The Guardian:

It will soon be half a century since the American astronomer Frank Drake first pointed a radio telescope at the star Tau Ceti in the hope of picking up an extraterrestrial broadcast, and we still haven't heard anything. So is there anyone out there?

Fifty years ago Frank Drake – then a young astronomer from Cornell University – began an experiment that would have profound implications for humanity's understanding of its place in the cosmos. He turned the newly constructed Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia towards Tau Ceti, a nearby star that is similar to our own Sun.

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