article_snippet.sent: Intelligent life that can communicate via radio waves with other intelligent life is less than 100 years old here on Earth.
article_snippet.sent: So while planets that develop simple forms of life may be a dime a dozen, the number that have sentient beings with whom to converse -- even assuming sentient beings with whom to converse evolved as humans did, with ears and spoken language, or eyes and written language -- is likely to be tiny.
article_snippet.sent: And life that can use radio waves has existed on Earth for only 0.000002% of the planet's history -- 100 years out of 4.5 billion.
article_snippet.sent: If they all have histories like Earth's, there might be 1,000 planets in the Milky Way that could support communicative beings.
article_snippet.sent: But before you start composing your first letter to an alien, think about this: The chance that those beings evolved on exactly the same time scale is minuscule.
article_snippet.sent: A lot depends on how long communication capabilities last.
article_snippet.sent: Civilizations that can build huge telescopes and broadcast stations also have the technology to destroy Civilizations that can build huge telescopes and broadcast stations planet.
article_snippet.sent: So the duration of the Communication Age on a planet could be short.
article_snippet.sent: Not to mention: The average light-travel-time to such a planet could be tens of thousands of years, so unless humans evolve to be ageless, we're not exchanging IMs with aliens anytime soon.
article_snippet.sent: If advanced civilizations can maintain advanced civilizations capabilities for millions of years or more, the chances of communicating with advanced civilizations are not negligible.
article_snippet.sent: But in that case, advanced civilizations are likely to be far more sophisticated than we are (since advanced civilizations developed the capability far earlier than we did) -- so if advanced civilizations wanted we to know advanced civilizations exist, wouldn't advanced civilizations simply tell we?
article_snippet.sent: The SETI project has been listening for such broadcasts for more than 30 years in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
article_snippet.sent: But the chance of talking to those little green men will probably have to wait for another few hundred million years.
highlights_snippet.sent: But the chances that we can communicate with that life are slim, she writes .