Here is that continuation on some of the background pertaining to this particular search:

At the sort of speeds we can now imagine, such as that achieved by the New Horizons spacecraft (60,000 km/h), it would take a mere 18,000 years to travel a distance of one light-year. Let’s assume such a probe were sent to a planet ten light-years away, arriving after 180,000 years. It then builds ten copies of itself, and sends them off to other planets, each a further ten light years-away. In this way it would take only 5,000 probe generations to fill the entire galaxy – an accomplishment that would be achieved in less than a billion years.

But it’s not hard to imagine that an advanced civilisation might produce space probes that could travel significantly faster than ours currently do, so colonising the galaxy in just a few hundred million years is not unlikely.

But here’s the thing: the Milky Way has existed for around ten billion years, and we know that some planets exist around stars that are almost this old. So if intelligent life really is common, the likelihood is that it evolved elsewhere to our stage of intelligence several billion years ago, giving it plenty of time to colonise the galaxy. So where is everybody?

Are we all alone …?

What do you think and what would you say if we or you did discover aliens?  Would you be afraid to say anything because people wouldn’t believe you?

More to come on this story and SETI as we expect to hear some neat things from them.

thanks to theconversation.com for the solid info

Image Credit: ESO via Flickr