Project Ozma

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Project Ozma was a pioneering SETI experiment started in 1960 by Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake, at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia. The object of the experiment was to search for signs of life in distant solar systems through intergalactic radio waves.

Drake used a 24-meter-diameter radio telescope to examine the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani near the 1.420 gigahertz marker frequency. A 400 kilohertz band was scanned around the marker frequency, using a single-channel receiver with a bandwidth of 100 hertz. The information was stored on tape for off-line analysis. Nothing of great interest was found.

The program was named after Princess Ozma, ruler of the fictional land of Oz, inspired by L. Frank Baum's supposed communication with Oz by radio to learn of the events in the books taking place after The Emerald City of Oz.

There was another attempt undertaken in 1960 to detect radio signals generated by hypothetical intelligent beings living near stars other than the Sun. Some 150 hours of intermittent observation during a four-month period detected no recognizable signals. The search was carried out with the aid of a special receiver attached to a radio telescope 26 m (85 feet) in diameter at the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, W.Va. The receiver was tuned to wavelengths near 21 cm, which is the wavelength of radiation emitted naturally by interstellar hydrogen; it was thought that this would be familiar, as a kind of universal standard, to anyone attempting interstellar radio communication. The telescope was aimed at two nearby stars (Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti, both about 11 light-years from the Earth) that resemble the Sun and seem reasonably likely to have inhabited planets. A second experiment, called Ozma II, was conducted at the same observatory by Benjamin Zuckerman and Patrick Palmer, who intermittently monitored more than 650 nearby stars for about four years (1973–76).