Last Saturday was the 50th anniversary of the first experiment searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, called Project Ozma, and also the 80th birthday of astronomer Frank Drake, the man behind the project.
Drake received top honors at the banquet gala at the SETIcon convention for in 1960, he decided to begin a search for a signal that could be transmitted to us from another solar system.
Astronomer at Cornell University at the time, he pointed out a radio telescope from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, toward two nearby sun-like stars, Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani.
He observed the potential hosts of habitable planets for 150 hours during four months and even if the experiment did not succeed in discovering any aliens, it started the search that is still going on today, and that according to people working on it will one day make a huge discovery.
Drake said that they “are fully aware of the great importance of [their] enterprise” and that the “discovery will be one of the most important to occur for any civilization.”
SETI Institute senior astronomer Seth Shostak said about his first attempt to discover alien life that it was “optimism that ranks right up there with Rod Blagojevich's lawyer,” - referring to the embattled former Illinois governor.
Drake also developed a formula that calculates the number of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations that are likely to exist in the Milky Way, based on certain elements.
The Drake equation has defined the way scientists think about life beyond our planet and it became the “second-most famous equation” after Einstein's e=mc2,
SPACE.com reports.
This complex formula includes data on the rate of star formation in the galaxy, the proportion of stars that have planets, those planets that actually are habitable, the percent of those that develop life, the proportion that develop intelligent life, the numer of civilizations that have a technology that can broadcast their presence into space, and the length of time those signals would be broadcast.
David Morrison, director of the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute said that “the Drake equation is in effect a textbook for astrobiology [as] he has given us the first great example of the synthesis of astronomy and biology.”
Today, Drake is still active in SETI and he does optical and radio searches for life signs and he believes that if an alien signal is discovered, it will transform our society radically.
“All of history has been just prologue, there is a new history about to come to us.”
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