SETI – In 1960, Frank Drake was the first person to look for alien radio signals by using the 85-foot diameter antenna in Green Bank, West Virginia. It was known as Project Ozma, and it was the beginning of modern-day SETI. A small NASA project was funded to do SETI in a systematic way but was canceled in 1993 by a U.S. Senate vote. Since then , all SETI research in the United States has been funded by private donations. Later, millions of people across the globe processed information on their individual P.C.’s for Project Phoenix. The information was obtained from several radio telescopes, the most well-known being the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. I visited the SETI scientist at Arecibo on November 26, 1999.
Over the years SETI moved their main operations to California using the Allen Telescope Array, funded by many donors, including Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. Today, another effort to search for signals, LaserSETI has been added to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. I believe in the SETI mission and have donated to them a number of times over the years. Follow the link for SETI.org for more information and consider making a donation. I recently sent them an email and requested that they develop a membership organization because I would like to be a “card carrying member” of their organization.
