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SETI Predicts We'll Find ETs by 2020
FTL writes "Based on the Drake Equation, Moore's Law, and the Allen Telescope, a new prediction has been made that Earth will make first contact with aliens within 20 years. Of course once we find the first aliens there's the question of can we decode their signals, would they spot our reply, and what's the lag time."
that by 2020 they will have changed the prediction 100 times because they keep discovering their assumptions are wrong. But they will refuse to give up wasting their time searching for the non-existent.
Borrow money from a pessimist - they don't expect it back.
I will attempt give you some hard numbers taken from "Reasons To Believe".
You must remember that the evolution of intelligence is hardly the most daunting fascit of evoluion. First, you must overcome other problems. Let's start with the environment itself.
Probability of a Life Support Body
As you can see from this compilation and the references included it's highly improbable to get a planet within the required range of suitability for anything close to carbon-based life forms.
Then, assuming we get past that improbability, life must spontaneously appear from non-life. This is more complicated than you may have been led to believe in school. Just some of the problems are outlined in these articles...
The suggestion that early life was extreamophiles has been pretty well rebuffed here. The theory of a virus being the source of life is unlikely. Then there is the argument that life started far less complex than a modern cell. Sudies have shown that the cell is of irreduceable complexity.
I'd like to think I am not close-minded to other arguments in the search for the origin of life. If you have other statistics, reports or papers please do post and I will be happy to read over them.
The thing I keep finding again and again is that evolution requires far more faith than religion. I do not hide that I am a believer, but I must wonder what the motives may be fore an athiest to so vehemenently deny the clear facts. If I am wrong and there is no God then that does not make the probability that we evolved any less unlikely. Putting aside questions of faith, arguments about morality and anger over the injustices of organized religion evolution simply does not make much sense!
Here is the kicker: I fall closer to the camp of C.S. Lewis than of staunch protestantism. I believe there is every possibility that ET life could exist, but I do not believe in evolution. I do believe that if indeed the Creator has created other worlds than the earth, it would probably be outside his design to allow interaction with them. Every evidence of the designs of God upon the earth suggests that this is a boot-camp for life, not a pleasure planet. We aren't here to see how far we can explore into space (tower of Babel and all that) but rather to see how far we as a people will digress morally and how far we as individuals may progress spiritually.
When the meaning of life is argued as one of individual spiritual growth and understanding instead of popular civil evolution and technical advancement the questions of the origin of life seem to make a great deal more logical sense.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
If you've been holding your breath that long, you might just be the alien we're looking for.