One thing is for sure with the SETI program and that is it can be compared to looking for a needle in a haystack.  There are billions of stars just in our galaxy and then billions of galaxies out there so it could take thousands of years before you actually hit on one with intelligent alien life.   Unfortunately many people do not see this and already consider SETI a failure.  I hardly see SETI this way for this reason alone.  Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years with life probably being about 4 billion years old.  Now think about how long we have had radio and TV where our signals are going out to outer space compared to the lifespan of our planet….Get the point?   Let’s be conservative and say that we have been transmitting signals into space for about 150 years so if an alien civilization out there was listening to us 160 years ago then they would have heard nothing and therefore concluded that there is no intelligent life near our sun?  The key here is going to be able to find an intelligent civilization that is either at our development or further advanced than us.  But this might prove that we cannot detect one that is further advanced than us in that who knows if they would even be using radio or television waves and not have developed another means of communication. 

Now for the question: Has SETI ever detected anything?   The answer would be possibly.  SETI has been searching for about 50 years now and has had only one signal that could have been artificial.  Unfortunately they have not been able to find this signal again despite numerous efforts; even when going back to the exact location it was found.  This signal was discovered on August 15, 1977 at the Big Ear Radio Telescope at Ohio State University.  It has been nicknamed the “WOW” signal since the researcher, Jerry Ehman, wrote the word wow next to the results on a printout.  The signal lasted for approximately 72 signals and had all of the markings of an artificial signal.  There have been many speculations about the signals origin but no one really knows.  These include an earth-bound signal that got reflected off some space junk, an alien spaceship, or some burst from a star.  I would love it to have been from the alien spaceship but this is probably the most unrealistic explanation out there.  Besides this signal, SETI has not detected anything that is definitively artificial since but there have been numerous small signals detected that are most likely from pulsars or other space phenomenom. 

So what is the future for the SETI program?  According to the “Drake Equation” there should be approximately 10,000 detectable civilizations in our galaxy alone.  I think this is way too high or I’m sure we would have stumbled upon something already but you never know.  My thinking is that there is lots of life in the universe but almost all of it will turn out to be small celled organisms.  It looks to me that intelligence is rare in the universe and that we might not be able to ever detect each other anyway considering the distances that could be involved.   Now I do believe that there are plenty of intelligent civilizations out there but my view is that it is probably closer to one per galaxy.  Fortunately, we should be able to get some better results in the coming years.  One of the key projects going on right now is the Large Alien Telescope Array at UC Berkeley which currently consists of 42 radio attennas but when complete will be over 350.  What is another exciting prospect is with two programs in space right now.  Both NASA’s Kepler mission and Europe’s Space Agency’s Corot mission are searching for “Earth like planets or rocky worlds” that are located in the habitable zone or where liquid water can stay liquid by being the right distance from its star.  This will give us some indication on how many rocky planets are out there and could possibly point out some stars to pay attention to and discard other ones without planets.  In the coming years there are plans to build even bigger telescopes to detect what the atmospheres of these extrasolar planets are made of.  So with all of this effort, will SETI finally detect anything?   Only time will tell so stay tuned…………