Making contact with alien worlds could make us care more about our own
by Ann Druyan from on (#FF6V)
The Breakthrough Message competition aims to build a digital portrait of life on Earth. Making it could increase respect for the preciousness of life
Related: Stephen Hawking launches $100m search for alien life beyond solar system
The scientific search for extraterrestrial civilisations has languished for more than a decade, as the hunt for habitable planets and simpler forms of life has thrived. Nasa's stunningly successful Kepler mission has discovered a thousand new worlds orbiting other stars. Astrobiology is a burgeoning field. But the search for intelligent life, begun in 1960 by astronomer Frank Drake, somehow fell off the funding radar.
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