NASA and others already have beamed several messages into deep space, trying to phone extraterrestrials. The US space agency, which two years ago broadcast the Beatles song “Across the Universe” into the cosmos, on Wednesday discussed its latest search strategy for life beyond Earth. “The search for life is really central to what we should be doing next in the exploration of the solar system,” said Cornell University planetary scientist Steve Squyres, chairman of a special National Academy of Sciences panel advising NASA on future missions. The academy panel is looking at 28 possible missions, from Mars to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. And NASA is focused mostly on looking for simple life like bacteria in Earth's solar system rather than fretting about alien overlords coming here. For more than a quarter of a century, various groups have been purposely sending out signals to other worlds. The most famous was a three-minute broadcast from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in 1974.
