Hi,
A few IISers recently went to Ascham School to support an astro night at which there was a talk about SETI. It was really pitched at a school audience but the speaker, Dr Ragbir Bhathal, Director of the Australian Optical SETI Project, was entertaining. He thought that lasers would be the best way of looking for ET.
One student posed a question asking if we'd be safer to shut up and say nothing. She suggested we had enough malevolent aliens right here in George St.
Personally after reading "The Eerie Silence" by Prof Paul Davies, I am again wondering if it is all a waste of time.
I think maybe we have to first try to determine if Einstein's theories still hold on a vast cosmological scale, because if so, a lot of the logic in SETI gets removed by the immense distances, Nature's quarantine.
Is Mars enough for now?
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astro...&rid=246616806
Cheers