Stephen P. Maran Astrophysicist: NASA’s GSFC 1969-2004 Project Scientist: Orbiting Solar Observatories Co-I: Hubble Space Telescope GHRS & STIS Instruments Press Officer: American Astronomical Society 1984-2009 Author: Astronomy for Dummies (Wiley) 

How will humanity first discover ET Life? Best guess: Technosignatures My gut feeling is that we will first learn of intelligent extraterrestrial life not through a great advance in instrumental sensitivity, coverage, or a lucky choice in search target.   I think so much has been done already, considering the apparent abundance of extrasolar planetary systems, that we need to take seriously the possibility that a galaxy-pervading civilization as posited in Fermi’s thought experiment, may exist and communicate, but the communications (which could well be in the frequency bands that SETI is searching) have been deliberately designed to resemble natural galactic noise rather than to be distinguished from  noise.   That is, extraterrestrial communications may exist for purposes of an extraterrestrial civilization that deliberately avoids making contact with other civilizations. Detection will finally occur when analysis of SETI data is enhanced with a brilliant new method for identifying artificial signals that are meant to resemble natural radio (or other frequency) noise.  Somewhere, there is a mathematically inclined person who will devise such a method.

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