The year 1979 marks the 20th anniversary (and 2016 marks the 57th anniversary) of the first publication in a scientific journal of a realistic strategy of a search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. The article, entitled Searching for Interstellar Communications, was written by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison, both then of Cornell University and appeared in NATURE. By perceptive, incisive reasoning, the authors develop the proposal that a search be made of some of the nearest sun-like stars for signals at or near the 21 centimeter wavelength of neutral hydrogen. Citation in NATURE, vol. 184, no. 4690, pages 844-846, Sept. 19, 1959. Interestingly, the Cocconi and Morrison article in NATURE was sandwiched between an article on the electronic prediction of swarming in bees and one on metabolic changes induced in erythrocytes by x-rays. No theories yet exist which enable a reliable, estimate of the probabilities of: 1) planet formation, 2) origin of life, or 3) evolution of societies possessing advanced scientific capabilities.
In the absence of such theories, our environment suggests that stars of the main sequence with a lifetime of many billions of years can possess planets, that of a small set of such planets two (Earth and very probably Mars) support life, that life on one such planet includes a society recently capable of considerable scientific investigation. The lifetime of such societies is not known, but it seems unwarranted to deny that among such societies some might maintain themselves for times very long compared to the time of human history, perhaps for times comparable with geological time. Good read .... onward ...
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