Salem Press

The Eighties in America offers comprehensive coverage of the impact of the 1980's on the United States and Canada. With free, unlimited online access to all the "Decades" titles in your collection.

The SETI Institute

Identification Institution established to search for signs of intelligent
extraterrestrial life
Date Founded in 1984

The SETI Institute launched the most significant public project dedicated to searching for any evidence that intelligent life exists on other planets. The stated mission of the SETI (Search for Extra- Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute is "to explore, understand and explain nature and the prevalence of life in the universe." The institute's most recognized project is also named Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life. It is an attempt to detect any radio transmissions reaching Earth from elsewhere that might have been generated by alien civilizations. This project evolved fromFrank Drake's original 1960 Project Ozma experiment, which used a radio telescope to examine the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani near the 1.420 gigahertz marker frequency. Project Ozma represented humankind's first scientific attempt to detect extraterrestrial intelligence.

The SETI Institute has evolved fromits beginning as a systematic search for intelligent extraterrestrial radio sources into a multifaceted organization dedicated to gaining a better understanding of life in the universe. Inspired by its founder Frank Drake and fired by the charisma of astronomer Carl Sagan, the SETI Institute came to employ over one hundred scientists from a wide variety of disciplines at its Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe and the Center for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Although searching for intelligent extraterrestrial life may be the SETI Institute's highestprofile project, other studies involve more fundamental inquiries into planetary formation and evolution. The institute's projects investigate how life began on Earth and how many other stars in the Milky Way galaxy may have planets that could support life. The SETI Institute's activities were also popularized Carl Sagan's novel Contact (1985), as well as by its 1997 film adaptation.