Frank Drake spent many blissful hours as a boy musing about the possibility of intelligent beings out there amid the stars, but he was reluctant to bring the subject up with his parents or teachers because it seemed so far-fetched. The idea nagged at him when he completed his graduate studies in astronomy at Harvard University in 1958 and when he took a job at the newly founded National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. If there are other technologically advanced societies in our galaxy, he theorized, they might be using means of communication similar to our own. So in the spring of 1960, he pointed Green Bank's 85-foot antenna toward nearby stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, making the first attempt to eavesdrop on radio broadcasts from extraterrestrial civilizations.
The two-month listening program, dubbed Project Ozma, did not turn up any signs of intelligent life, but it ...
