For thousands of years humans have speculated that the cosmos is teeming with planets, many of which could support life. Our questioning has tapped into a long-held desire to know our place in the universe – a core human yearning that has preoccupied some of history’s greatest minds. But speculation is about as far as humans got until we invented telescopes and developed a proper understanding of the scientific method a few centuries ago. Now scientists are making considerable progress in the search for alien life, and the past decade has proven pivotal. Some big discoveries may be coming soon, but where has the hunt for a life taken us, and where is it heading?
One of the first modern searches for life took place in August 1924, when astronomer David Peck Todd and an inventor called Charles Jenkins wanted to listen for messages from Mars. They asked the US Army and Navy to turn off their stations so they could use their radio-photo message machine to carry out a search. Alas, they drew a blank. In 1960, however, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) intensified when Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake used a radio telescope in West Virginia to listen for interstellar radio waves coming from the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. Called Project Ozma, this effort incorporated ideas from a seminal 1959 paper by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison. But again it detected no recognisable signals.
Esta historia es de la edición Issue 121 de All About Space.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición Issue 121 de All About Space.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
"We knew that this would be a historic comet"
Astronomer David Levy was immortalised for his co-discovery of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 – its impact with Jupiter 29 years ago held the world in awe
CELESTRON STARSENSE EXPLORER DX 102AZ
Innovative technology provides the simplest and quickest solution yet to finding objects to observe, and this instrument will be very popular with beginners
MOON TOUR - COPERNICUS
Get up close to the ‘Monarch of the Moon’
A HUNGRY BLACK HOLE 'SWITCHES ON' AS ASTRONOMERS WATCH IN SURPRISE
J221951 is one of the most extreme examples yet
MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE - WHY DOES JUPITER CHANGE COLOUR?
For years, scientists have tried to work out why Jupiter’s bands frequently move and change colour. Now they believe they’ve found the answer
MARS HELICOPTER PHONES HOME AFTER A 63-DAY SILENCE
Rugged terrain had kept Ingenuity from communicating with its robotic partner, the Perseverance rover
SIX OF THE BEST SPACE PRANKS
It turns out that the sky isn’t the limit when it comes to a good old-fashioned practical joke
CLIMATES CHANGE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM
Alongside Earth, our planetary neighbourhood is changing. But not for the better…
TIME APPEARED TO MOVE FIVE TIMES SLOWER IN THE FIRST BILLION YEARS AFTER THE BIG BANG
Time dilation, brought about by the relativistic expansion of space, has resulted in the observed slowing of ‘clocks’ in the early universe
WHAT CAN WE DO WITH A CAPTURED ASTEROID?
Asteroids could provide us with rare resources