Listening to starlight: Our ongoing search for alien intelligence

That's how long radio astronomer Frank D. Drake pointed the 26-meter telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) research facility in Green Bank, West Virginia, towards the heavens, looking for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. He dubbed his efforts Project Ozma, in honor of the Queen of Oz from L. Frank Baum's famed children's book series. Between April and July of 1960, Drake recorded some 150 hours of tape speckled with radio noise. While no meaningful encoded signals or patterns emerged from those readings, Drake still earned himself a place in history for performing what would become the first scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the modern era. Since then, research organizations around the world have performed nearly 100 SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) experiments.