![]() The equation looks at seven factors, all of which solve for N, the number of technologically intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. Their aim was to determine whether or not the search for extraterrestrial intelligence was a worthwhile endeavor and Drake proposed his equation as a possible way to narrow in on an answer. Carl Sagan was also there, along with several others. So was Melvin Calvin, a biochemist who received a phone call alerting him he had won the Nobel Prize during the meeting. That first meeting was a veritable who’s who of scientists interested in the search for extraterrestrial life. One way of quantifying which end of that spectrum you belong on is by considering the values you’d plug into the Drake Equation.Īppropriately, the Drake Equation was first proposed at the inaugural SETI meeting in Green Bank, West Virginia in 1961. Depending on your point of view, the lack of any clear signs of life is either entirely expected or shockingly unlikely. THE DRAKE EQUATIONĭespite decades of dedicated searching, we have so far failed to find any confirmed evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. As far as we know, they never received construction diagrams for a complex interstellar spacecraft. Rather than scan the entirety of the sky for stray signals, Phoenix strategically pointed itself at approximately 800 Sun-like stars within a roughly 200 light-year distance. It’s worth mentioning that the Very Large Array was not a part of the project. Between 19, SETI utilized several telescopes around the world including the Parkes telescope in New South Wales, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, and notably the Arecibo Observatory. The method of searching depicted on screen also mirrors activity carried out by SETI in real life, under the umbrella of Project Phoenix. Sometimes, in Hollywood, that’s what counts. That said, they also admitted that the image of radio telescopes stretching off into the distance offered a more visually interesting setting for the film. Arecibo was four times larger and more sensitive than the telescopes at the VLA. They further stated that if you wanted to search for alien radio signals then Arroway and company had the right idea the first time around. In SETI’s own review of the movie, they noted that the VLA is actually not the ideal tool for this sort of work. In the film, we see Arroway using the VLA to scan the heavens for alien signals which she, ostensibly, finds. Private funding is also true to life, much of SETI’s activities have been funded partly or entirely by private donations. Like Arecibo, the VLA is also a real location that is indeed used, at least in part, in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Shortly after the movie’s opening scenes, Arroway and colleagues lose funding and turn to a private donor to continue their work at the Very Large Array, a collection of 28 radio telescopes located in New Mexico. As is the case when adapting anything to film, even if what you’re adapting is reality, some concessions were made in favor of drama or visual appeal. That said, it wasn’t used in quite the same way as we see it depicted in the film. Prior to its tragic death, however, it was a part of the SETI program in addition to searching for near-Earth objects for NASA. In 2020, the telescope, which was built into a natural sinkhole, partially collapsed and it is no longer in use. Arecibo is a real telescope - at least it was - and was the world’s largest single-aperture telescope for more than half a century until it was dethroned by the FAST telescope in 2016. It also inspired the events of Contact.Īs the movie begins, Foster's Ellie Arroway is working for SETI at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. That search didn't turn up any alien signals, but it did launch the larger SETI project, one of humanity's most hopeful endeavors. They looked at two stars, Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti, both of which are about 11 light-years away. They figured, at the very least, it was worth looking into so they pointed a radio telescope located in Green Bank, West Virginia, toward the stars and started listening. ![]() ![]() In 1960, as interest in space was ramping up, a group of scientists got to thinking about all of the radio noise we were pumping out into space and wondered if we might be able to detect similar signals not from Earth, but from an extraterrestrial civilization. SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (SETI)
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