Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2020

G round view of one of the 256 grids, each made up of 16 spider-shaped an- tennas, that make up the Murchison Widefield Array at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), 800 km north of Perth, Australia. [Drag- onfly Media] NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2020 ASTROBIOLOGY 39 The patchy search for alien civilizations in the Milky Way continues tirelessly. Nearly all surveys are focused on radio waves, and will continue to be in the future, thanks largely to the planning of gigantic networks of radio telescopes, such as the Square Kilometer Array, soon to be built in Australia and South Africa. On the contrary, the search for alien signals in the visible light domain is rather neglected, which could be an error. I n the September-October issue, we re- flected on the search for alien tech- nological civilizations, coming to the conclusion that we are very far from having the necessary in- struments in place to under- stand if, in the Milky Way, there are other forms of