Aliens

[MODU]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Carl Sagan

Carl says the Aliens are already here, and cross our borders on a daily basis.

[MODU]

I loved the Cosmos series, even though some of his conclusions were a bit strange.  As far as if he was a Christian, no I don't think he was.  I think he was more of an Agnostic than a Scientologist.  He didn't believe that a lot of things in our universe occurred by chance, but he stopped well short of claiming that a deity controlled the heavens.  

[MODU]

Or, a civilization has the technology to send a small exploration group with the capacity to grow/create their own food supplies and is willing to reproduce while traveling, knowing that their children, grandchildren, etc will grow up never knowing what it is like to have seen their home world.  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.

[MODU]

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.

Other organizations have beamed messages to key stars and galaxies which are theoried to have life (how they determined that, I don't know).

[MODU]

I doubt anyone has actually sent mesages into space, though.

Here is one of the groups that provide the service:  Deep Space Communications Network

[MODU]

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.

Yup, for a few years now.  Not sure if they are still broadcasting though.  Haven't seen any news about their operations lately.  A few other groups are broadcasting though.  Most use radio signals, but some have tried using lasers as well.  The problem with radio is that after a while, the signal is distorted by background noise.  So if someone was trying to contact us or vice versa, we might never know.