Assuming you could communicate with beings light years away, what would you tell them about human civilization? Would you represent everything honestly, the bad as well as the good? And what kind of language would you speak?
"It's one of my favorite topics in the world," said recently-appointed Texas state artist Dario Robleto, who lives in Houston.
On Monday he got to ponder those huge questions alongside some of the world's most esteemed space scientists. Through his work, he'd gotten to know Ann Druyan, whose own heartbeat and brainwaves were recorded for the 1970s Golden Record that NASA sent into space. Recently, Druyan invited Robleto to appear with her at London's Royal Society for the unveiling of an even more ambitious project to make contact with intelligent life.
Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner announced he has committed an unprecedented $100 million over 10 years to dramatically accelerate the search for intelligent life in the universe. Legendary theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking was there to endorse Milner's Breakthrough Listen initiative along with its leaders, who include British astrophysicist Lord Martin Rees, U.S. astronomer/astrophysicist Frank Drake and Drake's team from the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in California.
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