Astronomers have been looking for radio waves sent by a distant civilization for more than 60 years.
If an alien were to look at Earth, many human technologies – from cell towers to fluorescent light bulbs – could be a beacon signifying the presence of life.
We are two astronomers who work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence – or SETI. In our research, we try to characterize and detect signs of technology originating from beyond Earth. These are called technosignatures. While scanning the sky for a TV broadcast of some extraterrestrial Olympics may sound straightforward, searching for signs of distant, advanced civilizations is a much more nuanced and difficult task than it might seem.
Saying ‘hello’ with radios and lasers
The modern scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence began in 1959 when astronomers Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison showed that radio transmissions from Earth could be detected by radio telescopes at interstellar distances. The same year, Frank Drake, launched the first SETI search, Project Ozma, by pointing a large radio telescope at two nearby Sun-like stars to see if he could detect any radio signals coming from them. Following the invention of the laser in 1960, astronomers showed that visible light could also be detected from distant planets.
Source: SciTechDaily
Published in Astronomy, Penn State University, Space and The Conversation
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