James Davenport

It's more of a illustration.

So really what we consider the beginning of modern SETI is 1960.

So Frank Drake, who some people know from the Drake equation, which tries to quantify what's the likelihood that we're alone in the universe.

He was actually the pioneer where he had time on a radio telescope for good bread and butter astronomy reasons.

At this point in the 1960s, people are looking at galaxies and gas and dust in the sort of interstellar medium.

And radio telescopes are a new technology still.

And he decides to point it at a couple of nearby stars to quote-unquote listen, with the intent of looking for...

again, chirps or pulses or some kind of transmission, he doesn't find anything.

But he starts what he calls Project Ozma, named after the Wizard of Oz.

Right?

And he starts to look for signs of, you know, transmissions, intentional transmissions from technology.

And this is really the beginning of what we call SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

We've done a lot of work since.

So my estimate a couple of years ago was we've pushed that from a pint glass of water to maybe a hot tub.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's massive progress, right?

There's a lot of pint glasses in a hot tub.

Right.

So I am an optical astronomer.