Nestled between mountains in a secluded corner of West Virginia, a giant awakens: the Green Bank Telescope begins its nightly vigil, scanning the cosmos for secrets.

If intelligent life exists beyond Earth, there’s a good chance the teams analyzing the data from the world’s largest, fully steerable radio astronomy facility will be the first to know.

“We’re essentially looking for ‘weird things’ in the data,” Croft explains, something that suggests life forms might be trying to reach out, or that scientists are picking up their accidental transmissions.

There have been a few moments of heightened excitement in the SETI community, including the 1977 detection of the so-called “Wow!” signal from the constellation Sagittarius, which remains unexplained.

More recently, in 2020, the team identified Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1 from the nearest star system, Proxima Centauri, but after extensive analysis, it was concluded to be human radio interference.

“It’s not deflating at all,” insists Lebofsky. On the contrary, he feels more optimistic than ever, given the vast amounts of data now being collected and processed compared to the early days. “I feel like the chances are improving exponentially every year.”