Making Contact

How do you greet an extraterrestrial? That's the question The SETI Institute is posing. The organization has spent five decades searching for alien life.

Recently it announced plans to scan a million stars over ten billion communication channels at its radio telescope facility north of Sacramento. There's also a companion project called Earth Speaks It asks space enthusiasts around the world to weigh in on what we should say if we do ever make contact with intelligent life on other planets.

Douglas Vakoch is heading up the new effort, and joins us now to explain the project.

(Photo by Paulo Alegria via Flickr/Creative Commons)