THE silence has been deafening. After almost 50 years of combing the skies, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) hasn’t heard a peep from any alien neighbours.
Now SETI researchers and physicists are debating whether the programme needs a radical rethink. This week, they met at a conference called “Sound of Silence” at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe to work out what they could do better. “Have we been looking in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong way?” asked conference organiser Paul Davies of ASU.
The roots of the programme go back to 1959, when…
