Ah, getting back down to earth here:
It is currently estimated that our home galaxy (the Milky Way) alone contains 500 million planets which, like Earth, could be located in the habitable zone of their parent star. And now that over a thousand planets have been observed and confirmed orbiting other stars in our galaxy, it’s not only possible but highly probable that life exists elsewhere in our own galaxy, not to mention the other estimated 100 billion galaxies in the universe as we know it today.
But the problem isn’t whether or not life exists elsewhere, it’s the monumental distance between the planets that is the obstacle. The Space Shuttle achieves a maximum velocity of 17 thousand miles an hour. If we could somehow make it go 670 million miles an hour (speed of light) it would take a hundred years just to get to most of those close by planets and more likely 500 years to reach an inhabited one.
The most likely method of contact by an alien civilization will be by radio frequency or laser communication picked up by one of the many antennas set up around the globe to receive such signals. Unfortunately, if the transmission was sent from a planet on the other side of our galaxy, it would have taken 100 thousand years to reach us and that civilization may no longer exist at the moment the signal is received.
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