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Douglas Vakoch, the president of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence), an organisation sending radio signals into deep space in the hope that they will get a response, believes we will have made contact with aliens within the next 10 to 20 years.
Mr Vakoch says we will soon find intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos due to the better technology that is available to experts now.
In an interview with Futurism, he said: “When Frank Drake did his first search in 1960, he did so with only one frequency, now you can use billions of different frequencies.
“My hunch is that in the next decade or two, we will detect extra-terrestrials if they are out there and trying to make contact.”
METI is sending signals out into space, in spite of warnings from people like Stephen Hawking, who advised against making contact with beings which are potentially much more intelligent and powerful than we are.
Professor Hawking said it would be best to keep quiet on discoveries judging by what has happened when humans have met other humans who they deem inferior. He believed it could spell the end for mankind.
The theoretical physicist said: “One day we might receive a signal from a planet like Gliese 832c, but we should be wary of answering back.
“Meeting an advanced civilisation could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus.
“That didn’t turn out so well.”
However, Mr Vakoch and his team have ignored these warnings, and said these supposed powerful aliens would likely already know about us if they are that intelligent.
Mr Vakoch said: “We have been sending our existence into space through radio signals for 70-80 years.
“Even before that, for two and half billion years we have been telling the universe that there is life here because of the oxygen in our atmosphere.
“If there is any alien out there paranoid about the competition, it could have already come and wiped us out.
“If they are on their way, it is a lot better to say ‘we are interesting as conversational partners’ – let’s strike up a new conversation.”