SPACE.com — Is SETI Barking up the Wrong Tree?
It’s been 46 years since Frank Drake aimed an antenna at the stars in the first modern SETI experiment. His hope was to hear a deliberate signal – guided into space by intelligent beings – rather than the natural, noisy dance of hot electrons.
Since then, SETI has expanded its search space, bettered its equipment, and refined its strategies. But the bottom line hasn’t budged: still no confirmed chitter from the cosmos.
Some people mistakenly confuse a long search with a thorough one, and figure that the lack of a SETI detection indicates that we’re alone in the Galaxy. This, however, is nonsense.
The number of star systems we’ve carefully examined is only about a thousand. That’s a trifling sample compared with the several hundred billion suns that stud the Milky Way, and of little statistical significance. It’s comparable to initiating a quest for Americans who play the oboe, but considering the search meaningful after interrogating only two people. In addition, and of great consequence to those who actually do SETI, the speed of the experiments is growing geometrically. Every two years, the breadth of the search approximately doubles. [Read on]