Astronomy
By Martin Rees, The Conversation | Published: Thursday, September 15, 2022
Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? It’s a question that has been debated for centuries, if not millenia. But it is only recently that we’ve had an actual chance of finding out, with initiatives such as SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) using radio telescopes to actively listen for radio messages from alien civilizations.
What should we expect to detect if these searches succeed? My suspicion is that it is very unlikely to be little green men – something I speculated about at a talk at a Breakthrough Listen (a SETI project) conference.