E.T., please phone our home

摘要

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has progressed rapidly in the past few decades. Back in the 1960s, researchers would literally tune the radio dial, hoping to hear artificial patterns in the static that would prove we're not alone. But they could only listen to one slice of the spectrum at a time. Now, thanks to massive radio telescopes, astronomers can pick up wide swaths of it at once. Breakthrough Listen, a global research group I am part of, is investigating more than a million stars for single-tone signals akin to our AM/FM stations.