Short Wave The serious hunt for alien life
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Feb 23, 2026 
James Davenport, astronomer at the University of Washington who works with the SETI Institute, talks about the evolving hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence. He traces SETI’s history from distributed volunteer projects to modern optical and infrared searches. He highlights how new telescopes and massive surveys could transform how much of the sky we can search.
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Screen Saver Citizen Science
- Regina Barber downloaded the SETI@home screensaver as a teen to help search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
- James Davenport recalls many people joining that distributed computing effort with home PCs.
1924 Mars Listening Campaign
- In 1924, David Todd convinced radio stations and the military to go silent and listen to Mars for several days.
- The coordinated effort found no signals, but it marked early organized attempts to listen for extraterrestrial broadcasts.
SETI's Narrow Historical Focus
- Traditional SETI has mostly searched radio transmissions for about 60 years.
- James Davenport says vast other data domains remain unexplored for technosignatures.