SETI at Forty: History, Humility, and the Quiet Cosmos

To the point

SETI started in 1985 with Carl Sagan as the first major attempt to listen for intelligent signals from space, drew on Philip Morrison’s ideas, and after about four decades remains unanswered, suggesting Earth-like planets and life-building molecules may be common and asking whether the universe is really quiet or we’re not listening in the right way, while showing that astronomy’s progress changes how we search and what we look for, leaving the mystery of silence unresolved.