Seti: why extraterrestrial intelligence is more likely to be artificial than biological

By Martin Rees, Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics, University of Cambridge

Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? It’s a question that has been debated for centuries, if not millenia. But it is only recently that we’ve had an actual chance of finding out, with initiatives such as Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) using radio telescopes to actively listen for radio messages from alien civilisations.

What should we expect to detect if these searches succeed? My suspicion is that it is very unlikely…

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