Searching for Interstellar Communications, Morrison & Cocconi. 1st SETI Proposal
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Searching for Interstellar Communications, Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi
[In] Nature, Volume 184 (July-Sept.1959)
This article, by physicists Philip Morrison and Guiseppe Cocconi, was the first appearance of a "realistic strategy" for attempting to communicate with intelligent life on other planets, "possessing advance scientific capabilities." Complete with mathematical equations, Morrison and Cocconi point out the possibility of searching the microwave spectrum, and proposed frequencies and an initial set of targets. The reader, they write, “may seek to consign these
speculations wholly to the domain of science-fiction. We submit, rather,
that…the presence of interstellar signals is entirely consistent with
all we now know, and that if signals are present the means of detecting
them is now at hand. Few will deny the profound importance, practical
and philosophical, which the detection of interstellar communications
would have. We therefore feel that a discriminating search for signals
deserves a considerable effort. The probability of success is difficult
to estimate; but if we never search the chance of success is zero.” Thus began the modern SETI era. The following year, Frank Drake would perform the first modern SETI experiment, named 'Project Ozma', and in 1971 NASA would fund the first SETI study.
London: Macmillan and Co., 1959. Bound in green buckram, pp. 1004. Morrison and Cocconi's article appears on pages 844-846. Bookplate and sticker removed from front pastedown, sticker shadow to spine, hinges reinforced. Good or slightly better.
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