No matter how hard SETI has tried to detect ET radio signals, very few have been picked up and none have been verified as being of alien origin. Are we doing something wrong, or is nobody out there?
It may all be a matter of math. New Scientist magazine reports that, according to Rasmus Bj?rk of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, “?Eight probes?travelling at a tenth of the speed of light and each capable of launching up to eight sub-probes?would take about 100,000 years to explore a region of space containing 40,000 stars.” When he increased the theoretical search to include 260,000 solar systems in our galaxy’s habitable zone, he calculated that they would take about 10 billion years to explore just 0.4 per cent of the stars. That is three-quarters of the age of the universe. In other words, we simply don’t have enough time to make a thorough search, so in the meantime, we have to hope they find US first.
Art credit: gimp-savvy.com
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