If you're sending a message to extraterrestrials, what you want to send is what's special about us and our planet - what is unusual. Now, that's not basic chemistry or mineralogy; it's pretty much the cultural stuff and the consequences of evolution.

Frank Drake

Only by doing the best we can with the very best that an era offers, do we find the way to do better in the future.

Frank Drake

offers eras way

Other intelligent life-forms will differ greatly in appearance - they may resemble the creature in E.T. or startle us with their beauty - but life itself is common, I'm certain.

Frank Drake

intelligent common may

Forty years as an astronomer have not quelled my enthusiasm for lying outside after dark, staring up at the stars. It isn't only the beauty of the night sky that thrills me. It's the sense I have that some of those points of light are the home stars of beings not so different from us, daily cares and all, who look across space with wonder, just as we do.

Frank Drake

stars home lying

Is there intelligent life on Earth?

Frank Drake

intelligent-life intelligent earth

To use Newton's words, our efforts up till this moment have but turned over a pebble or shell here and there on the beach, with only a forlorn hope that under one of them was the gem we were seeking. Now we have the sieve, the minds, the hands, the time, and, particularly, the dedication to find those gems-no matter in which favorite hiding place the children of distant worlds have placed them.

Frank Drake

time beach children

"I know perfectly well that at this moment the whole universe is listening to us," Jean Giraudoux wrote in The Madwoman of Chaillot, "and that every word we say echoes to the remotest star."That poetic paranoia is a perfect description of what the Sun, as a gravitational lens, could do for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Frank Drake

echoes stars perfect

It doesn't tell you anything about the civilization, but it tells you a civilization is there.

Frank Drake

science

People presume we've been somehow monitoring the entire sky at all frequencies, all the time, but we haven't yet been able to do any of those things. The fact is, all the SETI efforts to date have only closely examined a couple thousand nearby stars, and we're only just now learning which of those might have promising planets.

Frank Drake

learning stars sky time

The story seems to be that almost every star has a planetary system... and, also, the definition of 'habitable zone' has expanded. In our system, it used to be that only Mars and Earth were potentially habitable. Now we've got an ocean on Europa... Titan.

Frank Drake

only story ocean earth

We send messages all the time, free of charge. There's a big shell out there now, 80 light-years around us. A civilization only a little more advanced than we are can pick those things up.

Frank Drake

free things time civilization

Nature never uses prime numbers. But mathematicians do.

Frank Drake

mathematicians never nature numbers

Right now, there could well be messages from the stars flying right through this room. Through you and me. And if we had the right receiver set up properly, we could detect them. I still get chills thinking about it.

Frank Drake

me you stars thinking

While NASA talks about 'Are we alone?' as a number one question, they are putting zero money into searching for intelligent life. There's a big disconnect there.

Frank Drake

question alone money life

In 1957, I was studying the Pleiades star cluster at Harvard University's radio observatory. On one occasion, we saw an added feature in the data. It turned out to be an amateur radio enthusiast near the observatory, but at the time, I thought we had detected clear evidence of another civilisation.

Frank Drake

studying thought university time

There was a magic about pulsars... no other things in the sky had such labels on them. Each one had its own distinct pulsing frequency, so it could be identified by anybody, including other creatures, after a long period of time and far, far away.

Frank Drake

magic sky time long

The pulsar map is not dangerous at all. It will likely never even be seen by extraterrestrials.

Frank Drake

map will never dangerous

No company is hiring anyone to search for messages from aliens. Most people don't seem to think there's much benefit to it. The lack of interest is, I think, because most people don't realize what even a simple detection would really mean.

Frank Drake

search think simple people

It now appears that essentially every star has a planetary system. In the very beginning, we thought at best half.

Frank Drake

beginning best thought half