SETI & the Drake Equation
Frank Drake's Project Ozma (1960) listened to two nearby stars at the 21 cm hydrogen line; the Drake equation (1961) set out what must be known to judge the odds of finding a signal.
Open in the interactive tree →Cocconi and Morrison argued in 1959 that microwaves near the 1,420 MHz hydrogen line are the sensible channel for interstellar signals. In April 1960 Frank Drake used the 26 m telescope at Green Bank, West Virginia, to listen to Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani for about 150 hours over four months and heard nothing; a false alarm came from an aircraft. The Drake equation followed in 1961, SETI@home put volunteers' computers to work from 1999, and Breakthrough Listen (announced July 2015) committed $100 million over ten years, with no confirmed technosignature so far.
Prerequisites
- Radio Astronomy1933Radio telescopes and receivers made it possible to listen for signals from other stars.
Unlocks
- Finding Extraterrestrial LifeopenRadio searches for technosignatures are one of the ways life could be detected.
Sources
More in Space & Astronomy · Atomic & Space Age
- First Satellite (Sputnik)1957
- Apollo Guidance Computer1961-1969
- First Human in Space1961
- X-Ray Astronomy1962
- Pulsars1967
- Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry1967
- Moon Landing1969
- Black Holes (Cygnus X-1)1971-72