I know the possability of finding life in the universe is wrather high, but what is the percentages.
And some people think there are Extraterrestials close enough to earth to travel here, is that possible or just a ridiculous idea.

Don't forget that there are 9
various sized UFO's in area 51.

And that Wendy Carpsdale was
washed up by tsunami in a 90'
ufo. She was taken to a Bankok
hospital, and I wonder about
her condition now.

I find it fascinating that people look to other planets for life hoping on hope to find some speck of germ and run around claiming we found life. Or that life om other planets is possible, yet we do not concider a child in the womb a life. Interesting is it not?

I am confident that there is intelligent life out there... maybe not here, on Earth, but certainly somewhere out there. :c)

I suspect, though, that SETI won't be able to find it by looking for intelligible signals. Unless the aliens send something intended to be obviously unnatural.

An unavoidable consequence of sophisticated communication systems is that their transmissions look perfectly random. It's just a fact of information theory that, as one packs more data into a fixed amount of bandwidth, a fixed amount of time, or a fixed amount of energy, the entropy of that signal increases. The higher its entropy, the more random it looks to anyone who doesn't know how to decode it.

Already, after only about a century of radio communications, our new technologies are virtually indistinguishable from random noise. Ever since the movie actress, Hedy Lamarr, invented spread-spectrum radio, we've been moving toward systems that look exactly like white noise. Static.

Presumably, the time-window during which a civilization broadcasts signals that aren't optimized is very short.

Presuming such a civilization could pop up at any time, the odds that we will find such signals from any given civilization would be, judging from the one data sample we have (us) is about 1 in a hundred million.

Personally, I seriously doubt that radio-level technological civilizations are so common that there are tens or hundreds of millions within SETI's range.

Unless there's someone out there with the interest and capability to do something REALLY obvious, like modulating a pulsar's rotation, I don't think we'll find them this way.

However, this hasn't stopped me from running SETI@home, just in case. I'm almost up to 1,000 data sets, so far.

Would there be portions of our galaxy possibly much less suitable to life than out here in the "spiral arm suburbs"? I'm also interested in your take on SETI searches based on radio vs. optical (laser light directed at possible life bearing planets).

Well, like you David (below) I also heard Seth Shostak on Coast to Coast. He didn't sound sarcastic and closed minded at all to me. He was on the program to talk about the Extraterrestrial show. However people called into ask about things like the Egyptian teleportation pods we've allegedly discovered. This was obviously someone whose mental capacity allowed him to believe Stargate SG-1 was a news broadcast. Are these the types of issues you feel Seth was being closed minded about? And he didn't respond in a way you might have found favorable? If so, any thinking person would take your criticism as a complement. Still, I never even heard him say one unkind thing even to that fruitcake, so I am abit at a loss to understand your unhappiness--unless you are the 'pod-person'!

I suspect we will find that life is a very common phenomenon in our universe. Anywhere you have liquid water and the right minerals for a period of as little as 200 million years, life probably ensues.

But does it follow that intelligent life is commonplace? Our own planet Earth has experienced major dieouts of species every 65 million years or so. What if it happened every 30 million years? Would intelligent life have time to evolve? And what if it only happened every 150 million years? Would the pressure to evolve be less?

Maybe Earth has intelligent life because it falls into a 'just right' category. If that's the case then while there may be many planets supporting life, only a small fraction of them are right for the evolution of intelligence. And I suspect it would be a rare case where 2 intelligent races evolve concurrently within a couple of light centuries of each other. My own baseless guesstimate is that there are rarely more than three intelligent races at a time in a galaxy.

Gottfried Robens - Contact me at oopspoopsgambler@yahoo.com for a copy of the documentary. Ignore the previously posted addresses. - David

I'm sorry. I meant Henry - not Gottfried Robens.

Gottfried Robens - I will copy the documentary and mail it to you. You can contact me this weekend at this temporary e-mail address to exchange addresses. ignaciousity@yahoo.com will only be up for a few days starting Friday. If that doesn't work, try doubletallrocks@yahoo.com. - David

Seth Shostak is popular with documentaries supposedly due to his wit. I listened to him on Coast to Coast AM recently and he was true to form - sarcastic and close minded. It is hard to take him seriously when he obviously doesn't take whatever he is asked about seriously. His response to questions is usually that he doesn't think this or that could happen because of an analogy he gives doesn't work. I assume he is an astronomer, but he acts like an expert on biology, which he makes abundantly clear he is not. He said that since viruses use other DNA to replicate, an extraterrestrial virus probably wouldn't like humans. Why does he comment on things he clearly doesn't have a clue about, and why is everything a joke to him. He is a frustrated commedian with a captive audience who is fortunate that he received employment from SETI. He would have failed as a commedian.

You are not amusing Seth. You are asked serious questions by people who would appreciate a serious answer, yet receive smart-alec remarks instead. You give the impression that SETI stands for SILLY EXCUSE TO INVESTIGATE. Are you still employed by SETI? I can't take you seriously until you behave as if the subject of extraterrestrial life is not all a big joke and cease trying to be funny. Your jokes are a form of ridicule and would be found offensive to me if I were the one asking you questions. Feel free to respond with one of our clever remarks. I use the term clever loosely.

Thank you everyone for your great feedback and comments. For more information about Dr. Seth Shostak and SETI - go to http://www.seti.org/jointeamseti/.

My question concerns one of the statements in the movie preview. You and I know the movie is a fantasy. It has a premis that cannot be disproved or proved at this juncture in time. So the question: How can the movie claim to be "scientific" as the preview does. Is this not a diservice to all the future science students. After all, presenting a fantasy as scientific is a lie. Yes it is not truth but a moviemakers dream. Please correct this error; this scientific errorl. Don

I am really excited about the upcoming EXTRATERRESTRIAL special on the National Geographic Channel and I happened to catch Dr. Shostak on the radio here in Chicago this morning, on WKQX-FM “Mancow in the Morning” …Well, that’s a bit off an overstatement as it seems that the loser DJs who run the show were more interested in talking about how many people Dennis Rodman has slept with lately. I found this totally infuriating and very disappointing, although I should have known better, given the format. I think the work done at the SETI Institute is so very important and it is a shame that those of us who are interested in its research have to suffer such morons in the impossible hope that we might actually get to hear scientists speak on such fascinating subjects. It is also irritating that the media in general considers general public too stupid to understand scientific concepts. We are not all members of the Bush Administration.

Its a start to put money to SETI as individuals and we all should. We can also let the government know we want this in the budget, it can make a difference.

Jowil is right that we'd get a lot closer to finding life out there with bigger budgets. Until congress makes this a priority we all need to pitch in to support SETI as private citizens. Check out www.seti.org.

Hello there
I live in Turkey and I would like to watch the programme "Extraterrestrial" very much. Unfortunately it is not on here. Is there anybody out there who could record it for me and send it to me - either on tape or digitally? I'd really appreciate it. (of course p&p and cassette will be paid for). Please respond.
Kind regards
Gottfried Robens
Istanbul, Turkey

I really enjoyed your blog - thanks so much. I think we could be close to discovering life on other planets but we could probably be closer if it wasn't for the budget cutbacks at NASA etc. How can we discover life on other planets if our government doesn't give this important work adequate funding?