Blue Ribbon Eel free swimming, Lembeh, Sulawesi, Indonesia

A trillion planets- what now for SETI?

Based on the findings of the Kepler planet-finder mission so far, it is now believed that there are at least 1 trillion planets in our galaxy. (There are estimated to be in excess of a hundred billion galaxies in the visible universe). If even only 1 out of 1,000 planets were inhabited, that's still a billion living worlds in the Milky Way alone.  While all biospheres may develop intelligent species, not all intelligent species may be of the techno-industrial space-faring type (think dolphins, for example).  But those that are, are going to be much older than ours- and presumably also more advanced-  because ours is at the very dawn of its space-faring age, and other planetary civilizations might be as much as a billion years old.

Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at SETI,  gave a talk at TED  in May about SETI's new scope, the likelihood of contact, and what might happen when we do make contact.