It is in and around this cosmic water
hole that most radio searches for extraterrestrial
intelligence have been carried out.
The first SETI search was carried out
in 1960 by
Frank Drake as Project Ozma
(Ozma is the Queen of Oz in the
L. Frank Baum books: Oz is supposedly
"very far away, difficult to reach,
and populated by strange and exotic beings.")
Drake listened for radio signals from
two nearby stars, Epsilon Eridani
and Tau Ceti. [Overheads]
The SETI program was funded by NASA for one
year (in the 1990s), but then cut.
SETI presently receives no funding
from NASA.
Currently, SETI searches are primarily led
by the
SETI
Institute, which has two primary research
directions:
the
Center for SETI Research (which includes
the
Interstellar message composition project)
and
the
Center for the
Study of Life
in the Universe.
These two research directions are led by
Jill Tarter and formerly by Chris Chyba (you
might remember that name), respectively.
Jill Tarter was the model for Jodie Foster's
character in Contact.
How
did the movie do at
portraying the truth about SETI?