Intelligent Alien Life May Be Found by 2040, SETI Astronomer Believes

Rhykker

Level 16 Scallywag
Feb 28, 2010
814
0
0
Intelligent Alien Life May Be Found by 2040, SETI Astronomer Believes



Senior Astronomer Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute believes that intelligent alien life may be found by 2040.

The SETI Institute has been searching for extraterrestrial intelligence for decades, and the organization's Senior Astronomer Dr. Seth Shostak believes the search may yield results in a couple more. Speaking at a talk at the 2014 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium at Stanford University, Shostak explained that the odds are good that alien life will be found in the next 20 years.

"I think we'll find E.T. within two dozen years using these sorts of experiments," said Shostak. SETI has thus far scanned a few thousand star systems in search of signs of intelligent life, but in another 24 years, that number will rise to approximately one million. "A million might be the right number to find something."

"The bottom line is, like one in five stars has at least one planet where life might spring up," Shostak said. "That's a fantastically large percentage. That means in our galaxy, there's on the order of tens of billions of Earth-like worlds."

The SETI Institute seeks to detect alien civilizations that have developed to the point of being technologically capable of sending electromagnetic signals out into space. But Shostak views the hunt for alien life as a three-way race: his own team seeks intelligent life, other scientists search our solar system for simple organisms, and other researchers focus on finding signs of microbial life on planets in nearby solar systems.

"I think any of these horses has a pretty good chance of succeeding - just my opinion - a pretty good chance of succeeding in the next 20 years, say," Shostak said during the NIAC talk.

Source: Space [http://www.space.com/24622-intelligent-alien-life-detection-2040.html]



Permalink
 

xPixelatedx

New member
Jan 19, 2011
1,316
0
0
Man it's sure going to be funny once people finally see space isn't full of Star Trek forehead-aliens. I would die happy if I just got to witness that enormous blow to human-ego.

I'm also really curious to see the fallout in all the religions around the world. Books and movies could be made about this alone.
 

Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
Dec 29, 2009
13,769
5
43
What if they're not using electromagnetic signals?

If there are advanced aliens, they could have any number of way of communicating or whatever that we've never even imagined.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
8,687
0
0
xPixelatedx said:
Man it's sure going to be funny once people finally see space isn't full of Star Trek forehead-aliens. I would die happy if I just got to witness that enormous blow to human-ego.
I've always thought it'd be incredibly mind-blowing if we finally find aliens and...they're humans. Like, damn-near identical to us in every way. That somewhere out there there's an Earth 2 where homo sapiens evolved same as we did. It'd be pretty boring, yes, to finally find alien life and it turns out to be more humans...but how frickin' ridiculous would that be? What are the astronomically small chances of that happening? That's why I think it'd be mind blowing. :3
 

Shocksplicer

New member
Apr 10, 2011
891
0
0
The overuse of weasel-words in this article makes the whole thing a bit silly. We "may" find aliens by the time I go to work this afternoon, maybe lay off the hyperbole Mr Shostak...
 

Saltyk

Sane among the insane.
Sep 12, 2010
16,755
0
0
Zhukov said:
What if they're not using electromagnetic signals?

If there are advanced aliens, they could have any number of way of communicating or whatever that we've never even imagined.
All I can think is: We've been using such technology for how long?

Sure, there may be some alien life that predates us by a fair number of years, but how long ago did they develop the technology? How long would it be before we would detect such signals if they started beaming them out today? Would we even recognize that such a signal was something alien if we can't comprehend the signal? I kinda doubt the aliens will speak a language we know, like English.

I am doubtful of these claims. And I am certain that alien life exists out there. Likely even intelligent alien life.
 

J Tyran

New member
Dec 15, 2011
2,407
0
0
Saltyk said:
Zhukov said:
What if they're not using electromagnetic signals?

If there are advanced aliens, they could have any number of way of communicating or whatever that we've never even imagined.
All I can think is: We've been using such technology for how long?

Sure, there may be some alien life that predates us by a fair number of years, but how long ago did they develop the technology? How long would it be before we would detect such signals if they started beaming them out today? Would we even recognize that such a signal was something alien if we can't comprehend the signal? I kinda doubt the aliens will speak a language we know, like English.

I am doubtful of these claims. And I am certain that alien life exists out there. Likely even intelligent alien life.
If we did intercept an Alien EM signal it would be rather obvious, chances are we wouldn't be able to understand it unless it was designed to be interpreted on purpose but we would know it was an artificial signal because it would almost certainly be (or contain) a narrow band transmission. If it was an interstellar hello signal intended to reach another civilisation it would most likely be based around mathematics, whatever their language and whatever they call them the maths behind the laws of Thermodynamics, Newtons laws and Euclidean geometry and others like them would be a universal language for any technologically advanced race.
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
15,489
0
0
xPixelatedx said:
I'm also really curious to see the fallout in all the religions around the world. Books and movies could be made about this alone.
That IS a question, isn't it? Has anyone besides the Catholic Church spoken out about alien life?
 

WeepingAngels

New member
May 18, 2013
1,722
0
0
xPixelatedx said:
I'm also really curious to see the fallout in all the religions around the world. Books and movies could be made about this alone.
They would simply claim that God made the whole universe and everything in it, just as they do now. Since God is the name of their god, they can simply say that whatever god the aliens worship is the same god as their god.

If the aliens worship no god, there will be no dispute. It will be no different than atheists on earth.

Were you hoping for some big revelation?
 

Yopaz

Sarcastic overlord
Jun 3, 2009
6,092
0
0
Zhukov said:
What if they're not using electromagnetic signals?

If there are advanced aliens, they could have any number of way of communicating or whatever that we've never even imagined.
Or they may be smart enough not to return our texts.

J Tyran said:
If we did intercept an Alien EM signal it would be rather obvious, chances are we wouldn't be able to understand it unless it was designed to be interpreted on purpose but we would know it was an artificial signal because it would almost certainly be (or contain) a narrow band transmission. If it was an interstellar hello signal intended to reach another civilisation it would most likely be based around mathematics, whatever their language and whatever they call them the maths behind the laws of Thermodynamics, Newtons laws and Euclidean geometry and others like them would be a universal language for any technologically advanced race.
They'd probably speak English though, they do in Star Trek. Seriously though, the problem I see is that there may be intelligent life which hasn't reached our level of technology yet. They may be like we were about 300 years ago and be just intelligent enough to realize how much fun war is. So we might actually miss a potentially intelligent species because we assume they have to have reached our level of technology.

Or if we want to add some spaaaace magic they communicate with telepathy and they have anti electromagnetic fields that redirect out signals making them invisible. Oh, and they're also hiding on the moon which is really a space ship that makes up the base for the invading force. They're all humanoid though.
 

iblis666

New member
Sep 8, 2008
1,106
0
0
so were skipping the whole finding any alien life thing and going right for the intelligent ones? good move i always wanted to be some aliens pet.

BTW will anyone else be as sad as i will be if we dont find humanoid aliens? after all it has been mans dream for thousands of years to seek out new life and new civilizations and have sex with them. That is what we did with the neanderthal and probably other similar species as well as having references to our intentions in various media such as star trek and doctor who.
 

WeepingAngels

New member
May 18, 2013
1,722
0
0
Yopaz said:
They'd probably speak English though, they do in Star Trek.
No, you only hear the Romulan speaking English. The lore is that the Universal Translator is doing it's job. Of course we could poke many holes in that like "Why do their lips match their English dialogue" or "Where is the Universal Translator when they are talking to a Klingon face to face not aboard a federation vessel".
 
Aug 1, 2010
2,768
0
0
iblis666 said:
BTW will anyone else be as sad as i will be if we dont find humanoid aliens? after all it has been mans dream for thousands of years to seek out new life and new civilizations and have sex with them.
They don't need to be humanoid though...
Tentacles are perfectly acceptable.

xPixelatedx said:
Man it's sure going to be funny once people finally see space isn't full of Star Trek forehead-aliens.
[img/]http://kaosradioaustin.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=10487&g2_serialNumber=1[/img]

OT:
Yeah, he's using a lot of wild speculation and opinion, but I don't care. I hope with all my heart that he is right, realistic probabilities be damned.

And besides, 1 million is a pretty decent sized number. We gotta find something.
 

Yopaz

Sarcastic overlord
Jun 3, 2009
6,092
0
0
WeepingAngels said:
Yopaz said:
They'd probably speak English though, they do in Star Trek.
No, you only hear the Romulan speaking English. The lore is that the Universal Translator is doing it's job. Of course we could poke many holes in that like "Why do their lips match their English dialogue" or "Where is the Universal Translator when they are talking to a Klingon face to face not aboard a federation vessel".
Sorry, bad joke. I don't follow Star Trek so I wouldn't know any of this.
 

J Tyran

New member
Dec 15, 2011
2,407
0
0
Yopaz said:
J Tyran said:
If we did intercept an Alien EM signal it would be rather obvious, chances are we wouldn't be able to understand it unless it was designed to be interpreted on purpose but we would know it was an artificial signal because it would almost certainly be (or contain) a narrow band transmission. If it was an interstellar hello signal intended to reach another civilisation it would most likely be based around mathematics, whatever their language and whatever they call them the maths behind the laws of Thermodynamics, Newtons laws and Euclidean geometry and others like them would be a universal language for any technologically advanced race.
They'd probably speak English though, they do in Star Trek. Seriously though, the problem I see is that there may be intelligent life which hasn't reached our level of technology yet. They may be like we were about 300 years ago and be just intelligent enough to realize how much fun war is. So we might actually miss a potentially intelligent species because we assume they have to have reached our level of technology.

Or if we want to add some spaaaace magic they communicate with telepathy and they have anti electromagnetic fields that redirect out signals making them invisible. Oh, and they're also hiding on the moon which is really a space ship that makes up the base for the invading force. They're all humanoid though.
Aliens could be ahead of us in technological development or they may be behind, there has almost certainly been many, many species that are extinct too. Either they enjoyed wars a bit to much or they reached our level of technology before a solar system sized catastrophe or a comet strike wiped them out, just think about how many Gamma Ray bursts that have been detected and the area size they affect (as well as the Supernova that causes them). Then you have how unstable planets themselves tend to be, the universe is a dangerous place.
 

Draconalis

Elite Member
Sep 11, 2008
1,586
0
41
Rhykker said:
nearby solar systems.
For the record, there are no nearby solar systems.

Our system is the Solar system, that's its name.

The nearest system to us is the Alpha Centuri System.

From there the list goes on, but none of them are a "solar system".
 

Storm Dragon

New member
Nov 29, 2011
477
0
0
Zhukov said:
What if they're not using electromagnetic signals?

If there are advanced aliens, they could have any number of way of communicating or whatever that we've never even imagined.
Possible, but unlikely. Long-distance communication requires a fast medium of transmission, and nothing's faster than the speed of light. Since science has yet to discover anything else that reaches that speed, an alien civilization that has advanced to at least the technological level that we reached in the last century would most likely use electromagnetic radiation to communicate with each other across long distances.