One can’t help but sympathize with the overwhelmed astronomers who must harvest the fruit from this mechanical forest in perennial bloom. The Allen Telescope Array spends 12 hours a night listening to the stars and yields an absolute torrent of ones and zeros—50 terabytes of data generated by the galaxy each and every night. Most of the data is noise pollution: artifacts produced by telescope instruments or terrestrial communication signals.

Hidden among the noise could be proof we’re not alone in the universe. But there’s a chance we might not even notice.