USA TODAY The SETI Institute recently began searching for signs of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in distant galaxies outside our own. The research comes at a time when the notion that strange crafts sighted whizzing through our skies must surely be alien visitors seems to only continue gaining momentum. At a time of mounting public interest in UFOs, the SETI Institute is looking not to Earth to find signs of advanced alien lifeforms, but to the vast cosmos. It's been more than a year since Congressional leaders were regaled with public testimony – offered without proof – about shadowy government programs to retrieve and study downed extraterrestrial spaceships. In that time, the hearing has fueled a wave of docuseries, opportunistic marketing campaigns and speculation about UFOs, reigniting a public obsession that some researchers say is spiraling out of control. The idea that, absent any immediate logical explanation, strange crafts sighted whizzing through our skies must surely be alien visitors seems to only continue gaining momentum. But researchers at SETI aren't interested in the debate over whether UFOs sighted on Earth could be extraterrestrial in origin. For those astronomers, the best chance for humanity to answer the age-old question of whether we're alone in the universe requires turning our gaze beyond our own planet. And maybe even beyond our own galaxy. SETI begins 'extragalactic' search for advanced alien life The SETI Institute recently began searching for signs of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in distant galaxies outside our own. Using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Western Australia, researchers began the hunt for "extragalactic" civilizations in more than 2,880 galaxies. In an August press release, SETI hailed the research performed by SETI Institute researcher Chenoa Tremblay and Steven Tingay, an astronomer at Curtin University, as the first attempt to search for signs of alien technology in galaxies beyond our own. "Usually, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has focused on signals within our galaxy. This new approach goes further, looking at distant galaxies," the nonprofit organization said.