AstroBoy Online Forums

Whether it leads to E.T, Close Encounters, on the happy side , or V (The Visitors), TO SERVE MAN, INDEPENDENCE DAY, on the sad side, some scientists say that it will be at least 1500 years before we even learn of their (intelligent extraterrestrials) existence.
http://www.gizmag.com/cornell-equation-aliens-1500-years/43907/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=24563a2664-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-24563a2664-76704577

The article fails to mention it is an average, so IF we are lucky, it may happen tomorrow, and if not it may happen much later. That also depends on the definition of "lucky" in this case: if they answer by zapping us the Mars Attacks way, I wouldn't call that "luck"

It also doesn't take into account that we may receive a signal from aliens regardless of whether we sent a signal ourselves. After all, we may as well be on the other side of the equation, being the aliens answering the signal.

In short, this is a long article to say that we actually don't know and should expect a long time

TRUE.

Unless life on earth was "seeded" from another planet outside of our solar system, the odds are that alien life would look nothing like us. Carbon based life might be common outside of our solar system, certainly we do know that most stars have the same chemical makeup as our own, so the chemistry of other systems should be similar. However, that doesn't mean that alien life would resemble life on Earth at all. We might not recognize any communication we might receive from them as being a message.

That's why scientists think an alien civilization wanting to start a conversation would first try transmitting 'prime numbers'. But would we even be using the same math? We think in base 10, but would an Alien civilization? Again, seeking a universal language, maybe they would send us prime numbers in base 2?

It has been found that Titan has ethane and methane lakes, which may constitute bases for a life that could survive at what would be deadly freezing temperatures for us. No proofs, but it is theorically possible.

About sending prime numbers, in the movie Contact they had been sent as a series of signals separated by silences. We could call that "base 1", although mathematically it has no sense (bases can start from 2, not below, or the polynomial representation is meaningless). NASA has considered (or maybe done already) sending monochrome images by sending a series of 0 and 1 which would be a multiple of 2 prime numbers (so the resolution would be non-ambiguous): 91 pixels would then represent a 7x13 matrix.

As far as intelligent life goes, assuming we evolved by way of natural selection, is it unlikely that the same or similar result would occur elsewhere? That is, intelligent life resembling our own, bipedal, two arms, etc.