Attempting to Contact Aliens is nothing new.

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I found the most interesting article at Space.com about the search for intelligent life on other worlds. Believe me, in these very tough times we are living through, I would jump at the chance to live on another world with intelligent life that is hopefully more advanced and peaceful, but maybe I have been watching too much sci fi lately and surely that is wishful dreaming on my part.

Here is the story, it is worth the read.

From the article:

"The desire to contact intelligent life on other planets is much older than the UFO craze and the SETI movement. Several 19th century scientists contemplated how we might communicate with possible Martians and Venusians."

The word that sticks out to me is "desire." Why do we have the desire to search for alien life? The desire is so strong that science fiction literature is in abundance. Today film and television,as well, have a wide variety of science fiction themed works to watch. So back to my original question which is why? Why do we (or a great number of us I imagine) like to think of other worlds with life? I would venture to guess it is not to feel alone, or curiosity, or to paraphrase Carl Sagan in Contact "It would be an awful waste of space."
Maybe there are other reasons but regardless, I think it is great that scientists put themselves out there in search for new worlds.

" It wasn't until 1959 that radio-based SETI started to be taken seriously. In that year, Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison showed that radar transmitters of the time were already powerful enough to send signals many light years through space.

"If we can do it, then the aliens might be doing it," Shostak said."

I just hope that someone out there hasn't tuned in to what we are doing here on earth and decided to look elsewhere because we have a sh#$ load of problems that we seem to be repeating time and again. I hope this is not the case, but why do we assume (if we do!) that we will make first contact? Maybe someone is waiting for us to listen a little harder and get our collective acts together before contacting us! But then again, maybe I am watching too much sci fi again.