THIS ISSUE

摘要

Is anybody there? Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the Nature paper by Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi that made SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence) respectable, Fred Kaplan considers the impact of the search so far and looks forward to SETI's future incarnations. Morrison and Cocconi worked out the radio frequency most likely to be used by an alien civilization for communication. Find irregular emissions in that part of the spectrum and there we - or rather they - are. What chance success? The original paper has the classic answer: "The probability of success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search the chancernof success is zero."