Comments

I thought of an analogy to compare contact with extraterrestrial life to the old west contact of east to west coast. Back before the telegraph and electricity, there was no fast communication. In the old west, smoke signals and the pony express was used. After the telegraph, communication speed increased dramatically. Currently, all we are looking for are smoke signals from distants stars (radio transmissions that travel at c over light years) while relying on a pony express style means of communication (radio waves that travel at c for years to reach somewhere). If there exists a high level of extraterrestrial intelligence, then they probably aren't going to use these forms of communication, that is if they are more highly advanced as us. They will be using some form of faster than light communication, which we wouldn't detect with our current radio receivers. What we need is the space era version of the telegraph. Now it is probably more difficult to send messages faster than light than to receive messages faster than light. All we need to do, however, is to listen first to see if there is anything out there, so a receiver would work just fine. What I propose we do is that someone out there with that knowledge start developing a receiver for faster than light communication first to see if there is anyone out there. If so, we could study the forms of transmission and get a jump start on a FTL Transmitter, which could ultimately lead to even higher technology elsewhere.