ET first contact ‘within 20 years’

July 26, 2004 | Source: NewScientist.com News

If intelligent life exists elsewhere in our galaxy, advances in computer processing power and radio telescope technology will ensure we detect their transmissions within two decades, says SETI Institute senior astronomer Seth Shostak.

He based his prediction on the Drake formula for the likelihood of alien civilizations existing, combined with estimates of the time necessary for this observational task, based on the capabilities of planned radio telescopes.

Shostak also assumed that computer processing power for telescope image processing will continue to double every 18 months until 2015, as it has done for the past 40 years. From then on, he assumes a more conservative doubling time of 36 months as transistors get too small to scale down as easily as they have till now.

Within a generation, radio emissions from enough stars will be observed and analyzed to find the first alien civilization, Shostak estimates.