Progress in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence


Frank Drake
President, SETI Institute
Mountain View

ABSTRACT:

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has made great progress on three fronts. First, the continued exploitation of computer technology has allowed the construction, at affordable costs, of systems which can observe many tens of millions of radio channels simultaneously, and which can search through the data for a variety of possible radio signals. Secondly, observing strategies using two widely separated telescopes, and utilizing differential doppler effects in signals received, have made possible the quick and reliable identification and rejection of man-made radio interference. This has allowed system signal sensitivities to be increased as much as 100 times. This latter advance has been possible only because of the third development, which has been the commitment of substantial and reliable funding to SETI by generous private donors.

BIOGRAPHY:

In 1960, Dr. Frank Drake, working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, exploited then-new technology to detect any radio signals sent by extraterrestrial intelligent life. His Project Ozma became the first modern organized effort to search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence in the universe, and he has been deeply involved with SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) ever since. He devised the now-famous Drake Equation, a tool by which we can estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations we are likely to encounter in our galaxy. During his 20- year tenure at Cornell University, Frank worked as director of the world's largest radio-telescope, located at Arecibo in Puerto Rico. A former president of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Frank is currently a Research Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Concurrently, since 1984, Dr. Drake has been President of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, CA, whose Project Phoenix is the most powerful SETI search in the world today.