On April 8, 1960, astronomer Frank Drake launched a new era in the search for extraterrestrial civilizations. He sought the first direct evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence by pointing the 85-foot telescope of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia, toward two Sun-like stars in the galactic neighborhood. Tuning to a frequency of 1420 megahertz, he hoped to find a universal meeting spot. This frequency is also known by scientists on other worlds as the emission frequency of hydrogen, the universe’s most abundant element.
Although Drake’s Project Ozma experiment did not prove the existence of life beyond Earth, it did stimulate the establishment of a new discipline of science: the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Since that first experiment, which could only listen in on one frequency at a time, the strength and scope of SETI searches have grown considerably. So, in this video, we’ll look at some recent discoveries that have shocked everyone!
