On April 12, 1960, according to New York Times reporting, astronomer Frank Drake launches Project Ozma, the first modern experiment to search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) by aiming to detect radio signals from deep space. A recent Harvard Ph.D., Drake was working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia , where he was assigned to design a project for the observatory’s new, 85-foot diameter radio telescope. He chose to use the enormous dish to search for evidence of alien civilizations. Drake pointed the telescope—dubbed “the cosmic ear” by The New York Times —at Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, two sunlike stars about 11 light-years away that he thought might host habitable planets.…