Aug 16

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finding alien proof will be less that 25 years from now.Proof of extraterrestrial intelligence could come within 25 years, an astronomer who works on the search said Sunday.

“I actually think the chances that we’ll find ET are pretty good,” said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, Calif., here at the SETIcon convention. “Young people in the audience, I think there’s a really good chance you’re going to see this happen.”

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Mar 24

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Laser signals from alien civilizationOver a decade ago SETI pioneer Jill Tarter and I had a dinner discussion about the protocol procedures for announcing to the world the first detection of a signal broadcast from an extraterrestrial civilization.

I expressed relief that I would never have to worry about publicizing such a discovery from Hubble Space Telescope. “Hold on Ray,” Jill said, “you never know, Hubble might conceivably pick up a signal that other telescopes can’t detect.”

Oh, my worst nightmare! Imagine keeping that information under a news release embargo!

Now, some readers will scratch their heads at this because SETI has been popularized in the 1997 movie Contact where actress Jodie Foster “listens” for radio signals from E.T. with the huge radio telescope array near Socorro, New Mexico.

Interested? Read more at Discovery.com