The detection of life outside of our solar system requires some mind boggling coincidences. If we look for long enough we will find something but the amount of time that we will be able to look is limited to the life expectancy of our own civilisation which in cosmic terms is no time at all. When we discuss time in terms of millions of years it seems unlikely that we will be able to maintain this sort of concertive search long enough to be able to find anything unless it is through pure chance. Will we develop technologies to allow us to improve our chances? sure will it make a diffence? I doubt it. If it has taken most of the earth's resources to take us this far it won't take us much further. If we could apply this same logic to other civallisations throughout the universe it seems equally unlikely that they will be able to make an impact either. So why bother? well its that one in a multi-billion chance, you never know :-)
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.
