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Any aliens out there? SETI is listening
By dwray in The nature of things
August 17, 2011

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Years ago I sat in a dark movie theater with my dad watching Jodie Foster press her ears to headphones as she listened to evidence that extraterrestrials do, in fact, exist. More importantly, these aliens were using our radio waves to talk to us, and it was because of the SETI program that Foster heard them.

If you've never seen the movie "Contact", based on Carl Sagan's book of the same name, it's a story that brings together the seemingly conflicting forces of science and religion. Foster's character doesn't believe in God, but she believes there is life past the confines of spinning blue and green that is our universe.

To a kid trying to answer a lot of those basic questions about what I believed and why I believed it, this story about faith, science and aliens came at just the right time. It also left me glad to know that SETI actually exists and that people are listening and looking for beings from another planet as we speak. Well, we were anyways. In In the midst of tough financial times that has seen the death of NASA, SETI also had to close it's doors in April due to lack of funding.

However, that's not the end of the story. People have stepped up and dug into their own pockets to fund the program. SETI plans to start listening for aliens again next month. Faith is a complicated thing. It requires that leap, the willingness to take a risk and step out into the unknown with only the belief that what you're looking for, what you're believing is out there, really does exist. It's kind of wonderful that a bunch of people, including Jodie Foster, have the guts to believe in SETI and to keep listening for whatever may be out there.

Read more at NPR here.

"You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other." -- Carl Sagan