In 1960, Frank Drake took no chances. He wants proof. True proof that we are not alone. So he built a telescope and listened.
Project Ozma is the first serious attempt to detect radio signals from intelligent life orbiting stars other than the Sun. The name comes from L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz*. A magical and secluded place. It was this civilization that Drake hoped to find.
The settings are original. Green Bank, West Virginia is home to a giant radio telescope with a diameter of 26 meters. Not cutting edge technology by today’s standards. But it is focused. A separate receiver is included.
Why 21 cm?
You may be wondering if aliens are broadcasting on common frequencies. Drake didn’t bet. He appealed to physics.
The receiver is tuned to a wavelength close to 21 cm. This is the spontaneous emission wavelength of interstellar hydrogen. Hydrogen is everywhere. It is the most common element in the universe. If you want to send a signal that everyone everywhere understands, you can use universal constants. hydrogen. This is standard. Cosmic handshake.
“Since this is a universal standard, it was considered familiar to anyone who has ever attempted interstellar radio communication.”
Drake gives this record 2 stars. Epsilon Eridanus. Tao Cetus. The distance between the two is about 11 light years. They are like our sun. Looks stable. It is very likely that there are inhabited planets. If anyone’s listening, they’re here.
Silence
4 months. It seems so long.
Intermittent observation. About 150 hours in total. The sky is silent. There are no detectable signals. There is no beep. There is no math. It’s just static.
Did Drake fail? Or did he hear it too briefly? The results are inconclusive. But that method worked. This proves that we “can” listen.
The search continues
they didn’t stop. Science does not end in silence.
Benjamin Zuckerman and Patrick Palmer took up the baton. They call it Ozma II. It’s the same observatory. The same goes for Green Bank in West Virginia. But the approach is different.
From 1973 to 1976, they monitored more than 650 nearby stars. Intermittent follow-up for more than 4 years. This is much more than Drake’s star pairing. I have a lot of time.
No signal yet. All that remains is the hum of space.
Why it matters now
You may be wondering why we are still talking about the failed expeditions of the 60s. This has nothing to do with failure. That’s the default.
We imagine a reconnaissance mission. Assume that hydrogen is used. We assume they are close to a sun-like star.
In a sense, we are wrong. At that time we didn’t know about exoplanets. I don’t know how common they are. We don’t know about water world or super earth.
But we know this. The universe is big. Too big to be empty.
Project Ozma is just the beginning. This was the first step in a long, silent conversation. we’re still listening. This time I asked more seriously.
