“My inner eight-year-old, my inner Star Trek nerd, started putting this together that we should use the data that we have and try to figure out how to pull the knowledge from 60 years of radio astronomy and apply it into this optical, visible-light astronomy. My hope in pushing this from the radio into the visible light, into the infrared, and other domains of astronomy that are so active is that we can actually push this from a hot tub to maybe an Olympic swimming pool.”
-Comment by James Davenport, an astronomer from the University of Washington, discussing the ongoing search for intelligent life (SETI) with Regina Barber, host of NPR’s Short Wave podcast. They were discussing how the SETI efforts to date equate to searching a hot-tub worth of water compared to the entire ocean. You can hear more in the episode titled “The Serious Hunt for Alien Life.”
Our Awesome Universe 