The Beacon Project, or simply Beacon, is a nonprofit organization which maintains a network of radio telescopes and high-power transmitters for the sole purpose of detecting, analyzing, and replying to radio contact messages from deep space. Beacon also maintains the Echo Archive, a complete and annotated collection of every message ever received from other civilizations elsewhere in the universe. Over the last eight centuries since its founding, there have been 121 of these messages, and Beacon has responded to every single one of them regardless of distance to the origin.
The driving motivation behind Beacon is simple, straightforward, and rooted deeply in universal pathos. It was perhaps best summarized by its founding director, Dr. Alma Juarez, in a speech given shortly after the discovery of a radio broadcast emanating from the star Tau Ceti in the year 2220:
We have, by sheer cosmic fortune, heard this call. We have transcribed it, deciphered it, traced its origin. It comes from just twelve lightyears away, from a civilization we may never truly know, and may never hear from again. It would be so simple, so easy, to be content with listening. But I am not content with just listening, and I suspect neither are you. Because we know what the silence of infinity sounds like. Because we spent centuries scared out of our minds that we were all alone in the whole universe, blasting messages out into the night, begging someone to answer. We now have the chance to be the answer. So I say to you: look me in the eye, remember the terror of being completely alone, remember how long we looked and how hard we listened for any trace of anyone else at all, and tell me we shouldn't respond. No, we will respond. We will embrace each other in defiance of the distance that separates us. We will ensure that no matter what happens next, these people know that someone heard them. We will make certain they know they are not alone.
