If intelligent life exists beyond Earth, there's a good chance the teams analysing the data from the world's largest, fully steerable radio astronomy facility will be the first to know
The Green Bank Telescope, a 100-meter fully steerable radio telescope, is seen near a farm in the Green Bank Observatory in the US National Radio Quiet Zone.
Image: Brendan Smialowski / AFP©
Nestled between mountains in a secluded corner of West Virginia, a giant awakens: the Green Bank Telescope begins its nightly vigil, scanning the cosmos for secrets.Â
If intelligent life exists beyond Earth, there's a good chance the teams analyzing the data from the world's largest, fully steerable radio astronomy facility will be the first to know.
"People have been asking themselves the question, 'Are we alone in the universe?' ever since they first gazed up at the night sky and wondered if there were other worlds out there," says Steve Croft, project scientist for the Breakthrough Listen initiative.
For the past decade, this groundbreaking scientific endeavor has partnered with a pioneering, US government-funded site built in the 1950s to search for "technosignatures"—traces of technology that originate far beyond our own solar system.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or "SETI," was long dismissed as the realm of eccentrics and was even cut off from federal funding by Congress thirty years ago.