April marks 50 years in our search for extraterrestrials

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Are there aliens among us? This month marks the 50th anniversary of our search for intelligent life in outer space. It started back in 1960 when West Virginian, Frank Drake, pointed a radio telescope at two stars.

Retired Planetarium astronomer, David Dodge, says we’ve been listening to the signals coming from outer space ever since, hoping to detect some kind of transmission. “Things that would just not sound normal.  The normal hiss of space would be interrupted or augmented by strange, let’s just say, harmonics of some sort of radio signal indicating its powered by intelligent life.”

Dodge is a believer though. He says the sheer number of stars suggests there has to be other life out there.

He adds one of the main challenges in making contact is we don’t think like aliens. “Are we listening at the right frequencies? Do we have the power to investigate all of those signals from all of those frequencies in a timely manner?”

Dodge says we are making huge strides in monitoring signals and believes it’s only a matter of time before we discover there actually are aliens among us.

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