WORT sent out its first – admittedly ramshackle – broadcast on December 1, 1975.  Since then, WORT’s radio signal, first at 89.7 megahertz, then at 89.9 megahertz, has expanded, at the speed of light,  in a bubble from the planet earth to a point 50 light years away, fading in intensity, but theoretically, still intact.  As it turns out, there’s a chance – a very slim chance – that there might be someone out there who is hearing that signal for the first time.  Exoplanet 1140b, more colorfully known as “The Eyeball Planet,” lies 50 light-years away.  It was once thought to be an uninhabitable gas giant, but new data from the James Webb telescope suggests it might have a rocky core and liquid water.  Where there’s water, there may be life.  On the phone to tell us more is Charles Cadieux, post-doctoral researcher at the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets, Universite de Montreal and lead author of the research paper in the preprint journal arXiv.

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