We are on the cusp of discovering new technologies that “will take us even farther as we explore the planets and the stars” — and lead us closer to making contact with alien life, writes Michio Kaku in “The Future of Humanity.”
We know that one out of every five stars in the Milky Way galaxy has an Earth-like planet orbiting it — which means that there are more than 20 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, according to Kaku. Though there are other conditions necessary to creating life (there must be a Jupiter-sized neighbor to keep asteroids and debris out of the planet’s path and the Earth-like planet requires a moon to stabilize it), there seems to be plenty of options out there for life to exist.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, thanks in part to funding from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, devotes 42 high-powered telescopes to scanning a million stars to listen for alien communication.
Last year astronomers sent out a signal from the Norwegian city of Tromsø, containing electronic music and information on geometry and binary numbers, hoping it will reach ET ears.
Dr. Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute told Kaku that he believes we will make contact before 2025, though he upped that number by 10 years in a recent article for science magazine The Nautilus.
“I’ve bet a cup of coffee to any and all that by 2035 we’ll have evidence of ET,” Shostak wrote. “I’m optimistic by nature — as a scientist, you have to be . . . I feel that we’re on the cusp of learning something truly revolutionary.”
But what would ETs look like once we finally meet them?
To read more, click here.