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Space Topics: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Special Features

Is there intelligent life in the universe? How have scientists searched for signs from extraterrestrial beings? How have The Planetary Society and its members supported the search? And how would we actually know that our efforts to find intelligent aliens have, at long last, been successful?

These questions and others like them have occupied both scientists and fans of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Here's your chance to find out some answers - and even more questions!

Read about:

• Will SETI succeed? Read the classic debate between Carl Sagan and Ernst Mayr.
  
  
• The History of SETI: the search for extraterrestrial intelligence from its beginnings in the 1950s, to today's cutting-edge projects.
  
  
• What to expect when E.T. calls? Find out here what you'll see on your SETI@home computer screen when aliens come calling.
  
  
• The Planetary Society and SETI: learn how the Society saved SETI and supported innovative searches over the past quarter-century.
  
  
• The Drake Equation: The unifying principle of the science of SETI.

All this and more as we search for an answer to one of humankind's timeless question: are we alone?