Despite their best efforts, the SETI Institute (of which Dr. Frank Drake is the Chairman of the Board) has not yet detected an interstellar radio signal since it was founded in 1984. Nor has the popular distributed computing project SETI@home, which uses your computer’s spare CPU cycles to analyze data obtained from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

In the recent book “Perfect Planet. Clever Species: How Unique Are We?” author William C. Burger argues that our sun, despite its frequent designation in textbooks as an “ordinary” star, really isn’t that average. Most stars are smaller and can’t supply the energy requirements for a life-sustaining planet. In addition, our planet lies sits comfortably in the “Goldilocks” zone, just right for life, not so close that it’s torrid like Mercury and Venus, not so far that it’s freezing. As an article in SavannahNOW explains, humanity’s ascent was uncommonly lucky. Would mammals have evolved if dinosaurs hadn’t vanished? Would we be here if flowering plants hadn’t flourished? “Until there was rich three-dimensional land flora to support a feisty fauna, the likelihood of evolving smart monkeys and even smarter humans was zero,” Burger states. “Creatures like ourselves are likely to evolve only when challenged by rich and complex environments. That’s been true here on planet Earth, and it’s likely to be true elsewhere in the universe as well.”

In a recent phone interview with Dalton State College, Tom Dreschel, a manager at the NASA Fundamental Space Biology Outreach Program said, “At this point in time, we don’t have any hard evidence of life on other planets. But we don’t have any reason to believe there is not.” He added, “I think there’s likely life on other planets, intelligent or not. With all the billions of planets out there, there are bound to be a few conducive to higher life forms.” Regarding how they may appear, Dreschel said, “A lot of science fiction writers have speculated on that. It would depend on what conditions it developed under. Things that live on the bottom of the sea don’t look like things that live on land. They would need millions, if not billions, of years to develop intelligent life forms.” And what of the possibility of aliens visiting us? “I find that very unlikely,” said Dreschel. “Even if they could break the speed of light, it would take generations to move from one star to another. And they would have to be able to survive the trip.” A major problem, he went on to say, is that of transporting food, water and other necessities. “On average, a single person uses 11 metric tons of food, water and oxygen per year. You’d have to take along extra space shuttles just for the supplies.” Until humans can reduce the travel time between planets and galaxies, long-distance space travel will probably remain in the realm of fantasy, Dreschel said.

Yet perhaps not all of Dreschel’s arguments make sense. If we could break the speed of light, for instance, via some sort of warp drive, who is to say how much faster than light we might travel? Perhaps it would only take days, not generations. Or if the speed of light cannot be passed, perhaps a voyage of hundreds of years is a mere inconvenience for a near-immortal species or a species that has perfected cryonics, in which people are frozen, so as not to age, and later revived (not to be confused with cryogenics).

But IF intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, and IF they are capable of interstellar travel, then where are they? If they are already here, as may UFO believers think, then why would they not announce themselves? Rather than getting into conspiracy theories of government coverups, perhaps a better question could be asked, namely, “Why would we expect them to communicate with us?” Consider this. Our knowledge of the human genome and genetic manipulation is growing by leaps and bounds every year, yet it is still in its infancy. How long might it be before an intellectually superior human is genetically engineered? No matter how many laws are passed in countries around the world, surely someone will do it eventually, whether it takes decades, centuries or millenia. And who knows what feats of science those new humans will be capable of achieving? Fear of being at a technological disadvantage will cause this genetic manipulation to become common practice. The next evolutionary leap for humanity, however much we may fear it, will surely be due to genetic manipulation. At the same time, we may see the dawn of true artificial intelligence within years or decades. Now imagine that these two advances had already happened to an alien race, not just hundreds or thousands of years ago, but millions of years ago. Their intelligence could very well be beyond the scope of our imagination. We would have nothing of worth to offer them. No knowledge of any value to share. The only interest we may hold to them may be to study, without interference, the early development of a primitive species, much in the same way we study an ant colony.

Given that if intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, they may very well be superior to us in intellect and technology, how wise would it be to purposefully announce our presence to the universe via radio transmissions, the way we hope other races are doing when we scan the skies for intelligent signals? Would it not be naive of us to assume all the E.T.’s are benevolent? In numerous science fiction novels, such as Battlefield Earth and The Neutrino Effect, Earth is noticed and promptly invaded precisely because of this naivet.

So is anybody out there? We just don’t know. But we are rapidly becoming more adept at finding distant worlds and searching them for signs of life, so if intelligent life does exist out there somewhere, we may very well be on the cusp of finding them. For better or for worse.