Powerful Radio Begins to Scan Sky for Signs of Extraterrestrial Life

A powerful new radio receiver began scanning the sky from the Southern Hemisphere today for possible messages from intelligent life in outer space.

About 100 people gathered at the Argentine Institute of Radioastronomy outside Buenos Aires as the high-tech receiver was switched on and began monitoring more than 8 million radio frequencies. Nothing was immediately detected.

“Nobody thinks it’s going to get turned on and there will be a ‘Hello, how are you?’ sitting there. But this is clearly a significant step forward,” said astronomer Carl Sagan.

The receiver lets astronomers for the first time systematically search the part of the cosmos visible from the Southern Hemisphere for radio signals from extraterrestrial sources.

“If we were extremely lucky, and there were some relatively nearby civilization broadcasting us a message, but they were in the Southern Hemisphere, we could have blithely been going on all these years and never heard it,” said Sagan, president of the Planetary Society, the private group that set up the receiver.

Astronomers are anxious to scan the sky from the Southern Hemisphere because they will have access to some of the stars nearest Earth, including those in the heart of the Milky Way.