How long until we find intelligent life on another planet?
491273
Right now, we're not even close to faster-than-light (or FTL) travel.  All out traveling has to be done at less than the speed of light, so most stars are farther away than we can get to.  Even at half the speed of light (which is far faster than we can travel) it would take 8 years to reach the nearest star, not counting the Sun.  (Not to mention 8 more years to get home afterward!)  Nothing can move faster than the speed of light, so our best hope is to do just like they do on Star-Trek.  The found a way to bend spacetime to get to distant stars without actually moving through normal space, which had less of a curve.  Nobody has any idea how to do that now, so we just have to keep expanding our understanding of science until we do.  Until then, I think our best bet on meeting intelligent extraterrestrial life is to hope for them to come to us!
312310
Is there such a thing as close by planets?\nWith all that we see in the night sky, not just stars but galaxies as well, what are the chances that we are alone in the universe?\nThere has to be intelligent life out there. We are all just too far from reach of each other. And most likely, other intelligence would be like us and send probes. Living beings could not survive the long travel, space probes could.
427364
there hasn't been any found yet.... but... the possibility of life on other planets is very  high....  :)
610320
Come to think of it... we all know that our planet is an insignificant speck circling an ordinary star, far out on a spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is an ordinary congress of a few HUNDRED BILLION stars among at least a HUNDRED BILLION GALAXIES!!!\nWe are still the only intilligent life we know of anywhere. But now humankind has taken a dramatic leap towards a possible demotion. Planet-hunting scientists and astronomers world wide are refining their technique in detecting other planets in far off stars & galaxies. who knows that one day, we may be able to find a world that is much like ours?\nFor now, humanity can bask in its special status as the only life known to be contemplating such questions. Many scientists predicts that this distinction, too, will crumble. But the search for other worlds is not only a quest for kindred intelligenc. it is also about the destiny of human species. Where are we going to be a hundred million years from now? Where will we go, and how will we get there? And how will it change who we are? _end
911812
The Nearest solar system to our is Alpha Centauri, and that is over a Light Year away. - Which is to say that it would take about a year to get there if we travelled at the speed of light...\n\nAs of yet, we have no way to travel remotely close to the speed of light, so a journey to another solar system would take a very very long time (hundreds of years) at the speeds we can travel today.\n\nThat means we need to find some method of over coming the time needed for that long journey.\n\nPresuming that we fail to acheive some sort of Fringe, science-fiction type "Warp Drive"...\n\nWe would need to develop a type of hybernation for our passengers and crew...  Cryogenics has offered some hopes here, but until we can freeze a human body without exploding all of the cells, and killing it...  We're still limited...  Certain creatures can survive being frozen, and they have diferetent protien chains that act as a form of anti-freeze in thier cells -But now we're talking about genetically engineering humans to make the trip...  Science fiction?\n\nThe other option would be a generational space craft.  It would have to be huge and include educational and hordicultural areas.  This concept would have the great great grand children of the original Crew arriving at thier destination...  Hardly Earthlings at that point since they wouldn't have ever actually even known a relative who had seen earth. -But still human...  This idea would be best suited for a colonization ship.  It would have to be self suffient in the first place, so adding extra hordicultural sections to allow a form of "Noah's ark" to be part of the mission would be best advised.  They'd be one- way trips anyhow...\n\nSo to answer you question...  Not for a very very long time unless we're flinging seeds of humanity into space in a desperate attempt to salvage mankind from extinction...  \n\nMaybe never if there's not some great secret to the universe that we are not aware of in science...\n\nBut it all makes great fiction.
1107979
Definitely.  In only a few billion years our sun will expand and make our planet uninhabitable.  Long before that things will get very difficult for life on this planet.  Evolution of communities of organisms that can travel interstellarly is essentially impossible without intelligence.  The only real way for this experiment in complex life to persist in this universe will be through the actions taken by humans and posthuman intelligent life.  Without the evolution of intelligence, life is doomed to live out a fairly short span of time relative to the duration of the universe in its current life-friendly status.
596996
Out of 10,000 Billion Galaxies out there. No Doubt there is something out there.\n\nEarth will contact something...but not in our lifetimes.\nI even believe there is another planet like ours out there somewhere.\n\nWe would be very naive to think we are the only intelligent planet in the entire Universe.
48082
Maybe we should start a little closer to home...if we can conquer the moon...then maybe we can move on to others like mars and yes there is extraterrestrial life..but I have doubts they are there on Mars..We certainly are not the only Intelligence in the universe..but then ...Humans on a daily basis make it very obvious that we are far from intelligent.
364063
Chances are, yes.\n\n90% of all solar systems are not in a circle so they can not support life.  Of the 10% that are left what are the odds that another planet is moving around a sun where it's not to hot or too cold. Even in our own little solar system there is only one.\n\nSo, if there is life elsewhere, we will never meet them.
330895
Greetings,\n\n4.5 billion more years until it swells into a red giant and engulfs Earth.\n\n-matt
1042715
IF we can make it through the next 25-75 years we might make it. Carl Sagan once said the reason we don't get radio signals form other planets is shortly after planets develop radio transmissions they blow themselves up.
13800
The problem with your question is that assumes that there are only to possibilities; we're alone, or there are little green men walking around.  \n\nChances are that there is some form of life other than ours in the universe, but it more than likely will be much more different than just having different skin and being a different size.  Think about how weird all the animals at the bottom of the ocean.  Then think about how similar their need for water, oxygen, food, how similar their DNA is to ours.\n\nNow try to imagine life evolving on world rich in totally different elements, exposed to total different frequencies and concentrations of energy.  The thing about life on other planets isn't really whether or not it's out there, but whether or not we'd even be able to recognize it when we see it.  \n\nThat and the fact that it takes years just to move from one solar system to the next.  Just getting to another planet capable of supporting life would more than likely take decades, even centuries with any conceivable technology(though an alien lifespan could make that less significant).  Any alien capable of travelling that distance, whether by nature or technology, would once again likely be so different from us that we would never recognize one another as living beings.  So there you go, little green men, probably not, alone in the universe, who can say.
249308
Sure why not.\n\nJust look up in the night sky. There are so many starts we can see, and untold planets we can't. This is just one galaxy. There are so many more out there in the univers. It is really silly to think that with all those planets, ours is the only one that has life.\nOur planet is still a young one. I'm sure there are life forms on other planets that have technology we can't begin to comprehend
894625
No. Icy moons in the outer solar system may very well be teeming with life. Beyond our system there is definitely other intelligent life. \n\nHopefully a lot more intelligent.\n\nBeam me up, Scotty.
341026
for billions of years yet.  However the earth won't always be here to see it.
749195
I think they will be on some other planet.
547876
If there is life on other planets (outside of our solar system), the odds of ever finding out that there is life there is infinitely, ridiculously small. The next-closest star to our solar system, Alpha Centauri, is just a shade under 4.3 light years away. Even if someone or something from a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri had the ability to travel the distance between our two solar systems and not die of starvation or, if they were able to achieve near-light speed, keep their molecular structures from becoming severely distorted, they would have to make an amazing pinpoint shot to hit Earth. Even if there is "intelligent" life out there, I think it's impossible for us to ever make any sort of meaningful contact with it. Anyone who has ever shot a rifle knows how just a fraction of a degree can determine a hit or miss on a distant target. The odds are that much more exponentially outlandish if we imagine interstellar travelers getting lucky enough to find our planet and solar system out of all the others out there, no matter how "close" we are.