the universe is huge if there is any chance of actually meeting an alien intelligence we will have to know where they are, make contact with them and arrange a meeting spot. The keys to such a meeting is as follows
1 seti We need them to tell us where they are and if we don't listen how can we ever make contact?
2 transmitting Aricebo is only capable of listening to a small fraction of the universe since seti doesn't have the funding for other radio telescopes perhaps we should be transmitting in hopes the aliens can hear us better than we can hear them. the "beacon" should give them contact information only. I don't want to wake up one morning to independence day.
3 ships Not every technological civilization will be able to use "warp drives" to come to us. we may make contact with an alien intelligence at our aprox. level of technology and physical contact would therefore only be possible after hundreds if not thousands of years. we can shorten the time by meeting them half way.
some of you reading this may scoff at these ideas. I remind you that jules verne wrote of traveling to the moon and nuclear powered submarines in the late 1800's. Leonardo Davinci understood the concepts of flight so well that he drew pictures of helicopters in his note books. I submit that mankind's ultimate destiny is to see the wonders of the universe with other like minded alien races.
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.
