Aliens

[Person Man]

I think we will find a mounting case for some form of fossilized or living life on Mars and will also find an exosolar planet that has the signature of alien life by 2025. Though I doubt we will actually get another "Wow" signal until aleast 2050, if at all.

[Person Man]

Theoretically, there should be at least thousands of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy, assuming that the rare Earth hypothesis is false. Assuming these alien civilizations are at the same or have surpassed our technological level, we'll find them soon enough. If not, then they're difficult to detect (Humans themselves would probably have been undetectable to an alien civilization until about a 100 years ago with the advent of radio).

The odds are that we'll probably find some sort bacteria first, either fossilized (perhaps on Mars), or living, perhaps on the Galilean Moon of Europa. 

I am beginning to think we might actually find some life on Mars.

[Person Man]

Well, at least the good thing about option 3 is that your anuce will not broken.  However, maybe on neighboring planets we have already found there might be primitive wild animals. I mean, if there are 2000 alien planets in our galaxy, maybe using Drake's quation there are hundreds of thousands of "wild" planets which instead of 500 light years away, could only be 5 or 10.

[Person Man]

As to the question at hand:
So far we have found no life except what exists on earth. Yet the diversity of life on earth suggests it can exist in a wide variety of environments, from the bottom of glaciers, to  the thermal vents on the ocean floor where tempertares, pressures and chemistry exist which would instantly kill life forms we are more familiar with.

Finding life such as bacteria or other primative life forms on other planets would be interesting, but finding intelligent life we could communicate with would be earthshaking. I'm surprised we haven't already found any radio signals from other worlds considering how long we've been looking. Maybe we haven't looked in the right places. Or it could be that more advanced civilizations have found better ways to communicate than radio. Maybe they've found ways to beat the speed of light problem. Or maybe they just aren't there.

That roundabout rant means I don't have a clue. I am happy to say though that the largest SETI project on earth is being funded largely by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Capitalism at work!

Yeah, Microsoft has been doing amazing things of late.

Anyways, maybe we should actually try to actively communicate. Maybe try to sell McDonald's.

[Person Man]

Of course, you then risk the medical side-effects of inbreeding, so who knows how healthy these individuals are by the time the find another planet with life on it.

Assuming, of course, that the alien life form reproduces sexually. Which is probably a pretty big assumption.

Maybe we should ask them. Maybe we can send a message instead of just looking for them.

[Person Man]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Carl Sagan

In that, he would be wrong (or at least poorly expressed). Until evidence can be provided, there is no reason whatsoever to presume anything. I am perfectly open to the possibility of life beyond Earth, but the lack of evidence currently points to it not existing.

"Sometimes I think the surest sign of intelligent extraterrestrial life is that none of it has ever tried to contact us."

- Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes

We need to contact them.

[Person Man]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Carl Sagan

In that, he would be wrong (or at least poorly expressed). Until evidence can be provided, there is no reason whatsoever to presume anything. I am perfectly open to the possibility of life beyond Earth, but the lack of evidence currently points to it not existing.

"Sometimes I think the surest sign of intelligent extraterrestrial life is that none of it has ever tried to contact us."

- Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes

We need to contact them.

I don't think you quite understood the quote.

I know. but still...we need to contact them ourselves.

[Person Man]

How do you propose we contact them, Weasel? You say it like nobody's trying to do that already. What about SETI and other such organizations?

They just hear, they aren't actually sending messages.

[Person Man]

One that will be able to reliably find earth-like planets wont be available until the end of next year. I doubt anyone has actually sent mesages into space, though.

[Person Man]

have they actually produced any transmissions yet? I know that Kepler isn't up yet and someone has already tried to use that as an example, the Euros have COROT, but that isn't that much better than ground-based apparatus.