Why haven’t we detected a signal from intelligent aliens yet? | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Aug, 2024

Life arose on Earth early on, eventually giving rise to us: intelligent and technologically advanced. “First contact” still remains elusive.

If you’ve ever gazed up at a dark and clear night sky, you might feel the same thing that I do each and every time: a feeling that it’s beckoning us and drawing us in to explore and wonder what’s out there in the great abyss of space. Each point of distant, twinkling light isn’t just a star in its own right, but also a chance: for planets, for biochemistry, and for life. If we really allow our imaginations to run wild, we might even imagine the existence of something better than mere life, such as the existence of intelligent, self-aware, and technologically advanced civilizations.

But that brings up a question that humanity has obsessed over for generations: If the ingredients for life are common, and we evolved naturally, then where is everyone else? It’s one of the most commonly asked questions to astrophysicists, astrobiologists, and alien hunters of all stripes, as people frequently wonder not only about the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials, but if and how they’ll communicate with us and what technologies might be needed to find them.