Let's Go Alien Hunting with a Child Prodigy

Most people twice her age merely scour dubious online sources in their search for a strain of evidence proving intelligent alien life exists, and others build a

Twitter-like startup that charges $0.99 to beam personal messages 17.6 light-years into space

. But if you're a precocious 12-year-old child prodigy, you take your intergalactic existential questions straight to the professionals.

That's just what then-12-year-old Adora Svitak did, when Motherboard documented her journey to speak with astronomers in California at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, as well meet Jill Tarter, the director of the SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute.

Numerously referred to as the most clever child in the world, Adora found time between TED talks, a campaign for literacy, and getting her essays and poems published to pursue the thankless search for an answer to one of the most enduring questions in human history.