I totally agree. I'm guilty of wanting someone to find such things myself, however, I realize that the chance of anyone finding anything ever is very remote. We'll probably find life on Mars eventually , Earth microbes that hitched a ride and adapted, but, that really doesn't count does it?

   It's also tantalizing what could be found on a couple of moons around our gas giants. Even if we just find some organic precursors, it would give us a better understanding of how things could shape on other worlds.

I'm guilty of digging my heels in pretty deep on this subject because the conversation seems to go from microbes on Mars to ET buzzing the White House far too quickly for comfort. 

kuzinov:

Earth microbes that hitched a ride and adapted, but, that really doesn't count does it?

Even that would be exciting.

zachsdad:

 That's my point exactly.  Too many people talk about the odds of life as if it is a foregone conclusion.

Summed up quite well gentlemen.  My views are probably coloured by my experience.  Working with limited data before spaceflight scientists were sure that the odds of life on Venus and Mars were very good.  On Mars there was "evidence" of canals, or at least channels that fed water from the poles to the equitorial regions and this caused the bloom of plants that was clearly seen as seasonal changes on the Martian Surface. This idea was accepted by the general populace so thouroughly that when it seemed that HG Wells' Martians were invading New Jersey in 1938 it created quite a panic.  I myself would have preferred to meet the Bradbury Martians.  In fact, there were nervous suggestions in odd quarters that the reason so many of our early Martian probes failed was that the Martians shot them down. Of course we know now that neither Wells' scheming monsters nor Bradbury's forlorn and doomed creatures ever existed.

Venus' thick atmosphere promised a thick moist climate with oceans and swamps that could have been home to comely lonely Venusian women just aching to see an Earthman.  Of course if any such beauties ever existed they were long ago boiled away in their own juices and whatever remained was melted down to individual atoms. The true nature of Venus was quite a shock to nearly everyone I think.

This same mindset has moved on to Titan, Europa, and even Triton.  Beyond that it too has settled on the probabilities that must exist in the inumerable stars of our galaxy, and the galaxies beyond.  I am not saying that life couldn't have arisen elsewhere, I simply do not know and it is highly unlikely that we will ever know.  I have been cruelly disappointed  by scientists bent on funding their exobiological fantasies more than just a few times.  Anyone remember when the first pulsar was discovered and how quite a lot of scientists were sure its regular pattern must be the work of alien intellegence?

There may still be a slim chance of some extraterrestrial microbiotic life in our solar system but I am of the opinion that the chances of me doing the bunny hop on the Moon are better than finding any in my lifetime.  Believe if you will that life is teeming out there, I will continue to believe it is rare and precious.  Perhaps if more see it my way we will take better care of ourselves and those who live with us, on the good Earth.

L

kuzinov:

... We'll probably find life on Mars eventually , Earth microbes that hitched a ride and adapted ...

Actually, the odds are better the other way around: that Martian microbes hitched a ride to Earth and adapted. That's because it's easier to get from Mars to Earth by natural means (e.g., Mars rocks blasted off the planet as the result of an asteroid impact) than the other way around.

Of course, the odds of life on Earth are pretty good ...

Another scenario (panspermia) holds that the raw materials for life were scattered throughout the protosolar nebula, and later via comet and meteorite impact across the solar system, and that though it may have taken hold nearly simultaneously on many bodies, it survives only here (that we are sure of).

  I was referring to hitchhikers on our own probes. You can never completely sterilize anything. It's also a gentler ride that way. We'll probably never really knowfor sure outside our own solar system.

 I watched a show a couple of months ago about some of the ideas they had for just how life may have formed here, fascinating stuff. There's enough known about the organic chemistry on a young Earth to explain how things could have happened without resorting to the Deus Ex Machina of Panspermia.

 I also see the point about jumping to ET, but, people tend to gravitate to hypotheses that comfort them. I don't think a lot of people realize how big a deal it would be to find just a simple microbe. SETI is a neat program, it doesn't hurt to try, but, from what I understand, the chances of even an intentional signal getting through are slim enough.

kuzinov  : I realize this may look a little off subject but it pertains to detection beyond our solar system, I think SETI needs to think out of the box for a communication system that can reject noise far beyond the system they are using at present, because I feel the signals are there, we just need the system to detect them. I was wondering if you may have a unique concept for communications over such a long distance?

  That's a toughie, it has to be unique to stand out, it also has to take into account being red or blue shifted a tad. Radio would seem to be the best bet, a frequency block that doesn't get seen naturally,the real magic would be in the modulation. Amplitude Modulation is better for longer range( long ago, I was a radio operator in the military). You'd probably want a looping transmission that repeats over and over, making sure there's no way anyone who picks it up will think it's natural event. You would probably want an antenna array that is directional and capable of targetting a star system for the duration of the transmission to compensate for the Earth's rotation. I can't imagine us  having anything too soon capable of pushing out too far away from us and still get seen. Getting an actual message in would be tough, but, you should be able to at least get someone to notice we're here. Then years later you may even get a reply. I don't even want to get into trying to communicate with an alien language and the lag of possible decades between messages.

 I've heard discussions on using light, but, I would think that would be very difficult for anyone to discern amongst even the light of their sun at any likely distances.

SETI@home's distributed computing is their filter as far as I know. It's able to crunch through the noise and pass on anything that deserves another look. I know years ago they found a signal they dubbed WOW, but, it was never repeated so it was not conclusive. Pulsars are a great example of what not to use for a signal, a steady pulsing is probably going to be seen as something energetic and spinning.

 Then again, what do I know, I'm just a plumber...

Re: Primordial's question....how about communication via something like quantum entanglement?  Sadly, SETI would never be able to pick up those signals.

I suspect that in 50-100 years, humans will look back on SETI and shake their heads, noting that it was the rough equivalent of using telescopes to search for smoke signals on Mars, or sending probes to Venus to listen for war drums.  Radio waves, military radars, etc may merely be a couple-hundred year phase in any advanced civilization's communications.  The communication methodology used by a truly advanced interstellar civilization is probably as incomprehensible to us as a cell phone would be to a rider on the Pony Express.

Perhaps we'll be lucky enough to be "tuned in" to a star, thousands of light years away, at the exact time that some superfluous signal arrives from their 200 year "radio window".  But I wouldn't bet the house on it.

All of that supposes that such an advanced civilization actually exists...I suspect that is not the case...

But, I hope I am wrong!

 I thought of quantum entanglement, but, wouldn't you have to deliver the other half or, wouldn't you have to send some communication to set it up at the very least? It didn't seem feasible to me, although I thought it would be convenient. If I understand the latest expirements correctly, the information gets lost after the measurement and you would need a lot of entangled particles to send a message.

Kuzinov: I see what you mean about initiating the connection.  I was thinking that the "pioneers" heading out to colonize another planet would take their half of the unit with them for communication back to the home planet (where the other half stays).  Also, on the home planet, a communication device like that would probably quickly supercede anything else, resulting in a much lower volume of radio chatter in the background.  Instantaneous, completely secure communication is certainly more attractive than something that crawls along at the speed of light and that anyone can eavesdrop on ;-) Thus, any extraneous signals would become few and far between.

Naturally, this is science fiction at the moment for us - but it is an example of something that would make current SETI methodolgy largely useless.  Unless, of couse, that civilization was trying to be heard and had the resources to transmit messages to thousands or millions of other stars 24/7 for several thousand years.