Sixty Yea rs I nto the Search for E.T.

摘要

For about a week in April 1960, radio astronomer Frank Drake thought he might have discovered aliens. At the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, W.Va., Drake had pointed a new 26-meter telescope at the star Epsilon Eridani. Within minutes, the instruments went wild. The telescope's readout device, a chart recorder that used a pen to scratch out signatures of incoming radio signals on paper, scribbled erratically. A speaker connected to the telescope blared a train of strong pulses-just the kind of transmission expected from an intelligent sender. Drake was stunned. Could finding E.T. really be this easy?