00:00 The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, known as SETI, has been a topic of interest for thousands of years, with philosophers and scholars throughout history pondering the existence of other intelligent life forms in the universe.

01:52 The invention of the telescope added credibility to the idea of other worlds beyond our own, and many intellectuals throughout history considered the possibility of extraterrestrial life, including Johannes Kepler, Benjamin Franklin, Jean Locke, and William Herschel.

03:30 The idea of intelligent Martians was popularized by an astronomer in the early 20th century, but as telescopes improved, his claims were debunked, leading to the first serious attempt to consider the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence in 1961 with the creation of the Drake Equation.

05:05 In 1960, the first actual search for intelligent life was conducted by pointing a radio telescope at certain stars, but no evidence was found, leading to the need for long-term continuous observation, which was attempted by Ohio State University with the opening of the Big Ear radio observatory in 1963, and in 1977, the observatory received a signal known as the WOW signal, which remains one of the best candidates for an artificial signal ever found.

06:54 In the 1970s and 1980s, various SETI projects were launched, including Project Cyclops, Project META, and Project Beta, which aimed to analyze millions of frequencies in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and in 1999, SETI at home was launched, allowing participants to use their home computers to check radio signals, but in 2020, the project was put on hiatus, highlighting the need for a permanent array of radio telescopes like the Allen Telescope Array.

08:40 The difficulty of the SETI initiative lies in the unknown existence, location, technology, and method of communication of potential extraterrestrial civilizations, as well as the weakening of radio waves over vast distances and the time it would take for signals to travel.

10:22 The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is currently a side project in the world of astronomy, with no government funding and mostly relying on private funding or spare time on telescopes, making it similar to playing the lottery with low odds but the potential to change everything if successful.