
The most potent effort yet to find extraterrestrial life is searching for beings that may not want to be found
What could motivate extraterrestrial civilizations to beam electromagnetic signals into space? They might be using them for navigation or entertainment, or as a way of pinging our solar system to see if anyone’s home. Whatever the case, detecting such transmissions would be the easiest way for humankind to prove that someone else is out there, and astronomers have made intermittent attempts to eavesdrop on alien broadcasts for six decades.
