Nice article. Shostak makes his point concisely, economically, and avoids rambling on.

I particularly like his closing remark:
"Is there intelligent life on Earth? By our standards, maybe. But by theirs, we are probably as dumb as doorknobs. I, for one, hope to develop a little humility."



Our SETI search is geared toward detecting extraterrestrial civilizations who, for reasons known only to themselves, have decided to build big honking transmitters or lasers to announce their presence to the rest of the galaxy.

As others have noted, it is highly unlikely that we would be able to detect inadvertant emisssions/transmissions unless they were extremely powerful and focused directly on us or through us.

It is conceivable, I suppose, that there is a sort of intergalactic CB where sufficiently advanced civilizations engage in communications with each other, but which we have not yet been able to tap into because of our relative lack of technological prowess. Conceivable, but not likely at all, imo.

To repeat a point I often make on this issue, it seems to me to be highly unlikely that a truly intelligent civilization would be willing to broadcast its presence and location to the possibly wild and wooly unknown.

An exception might be a civilization nearing the end, for whatever reason. Perhaps it might decide to build some kind of repeating beacon to announce for all time that "From n to nnnnn Galactic Time, the Dorkmeister Federation inhabited planet x of star y until a strange illness began killing us all. The end is at hand. What follows is a summary of our civilization...blah blah."

Otherwise, I doubt the phone will ring on this particular line.

sp