Vulcans, Daleks, Martians, Grays – our culture is pervaded by alien beings from distant worlds – some benevolent…most not so much, observes the BBC: “In our galaxy alone, there should be tens of billions of planets harboring life, but we have not heard any broadcasts or seen any flashing lights from distant civilizations. Sixty years ago, the journal Nature published a paper suggesting the best way to search for alien life was by listening for radio signals. Within months, astronomer Frank Drake had begun scanning nearby star systems and SETI was born.”
“I do not believe that most advanced alien civilizations will be biological,” says Susan Schneider of the University of Connectict and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton .”The most sophisticated civilizations will be postbiological, forms of artificial intelligence or alien superintelligence.” Schneider is one of the few thinkers—outside the realm of science fiction— that have considered the notion that artificial intelligence is already out there, and has been for eons.
“Whether we’re alone in the universe depends on whether alien societies overcame the climate change their advances created, says astrophysicist Adam Frank at the University of Rochester who argues that argues that we have never been in a better position to answer question of are we alone , thanks to a revolution in our knowledge gained by powerful telescopes like Hubble and space probes like Voyager. Indeed, the chances that there has never been another civilization in the universe are as low as one in ten billion trillion. But whether there is still one out there today is a more complicated question.” (more…)