Looking for ET.

Kepler Telescope to Scout for Alien Worlds
1. Irene Klotz, Discovery News

Feb. 23, 2009 -- Astronomers scanning for signs of 2. intelligent life beyond Earth will soon have a new tool at their disposal -- NASA's Kepler telescope.
Though intended to find Earth-like worlds orbiting other stars, the telescope's data will be analyzed to determine if any of its targets cast unnaturally shaped shadows into Kepler's eye.
Scientists plan to fix Kepler's gaze at a section of the Milky Way galaxy to observe about 100,000 stars over the next four years or so. They are looking for tiny, regular changes in how much light is coming from the stars, relative to Kepler's view, which may be caused by a planet passing in front of its parent star.
The technique, in use for about a decade, has helped astronomers discover more than 300 large planets. Kepler is intended to hone in on smaller worlds, like Earth, that are well positioned around their parent stars for Earth-like life.

SETI searchers to date have analyzed radio waves, and more recently light pulses, for artificially produced patterns. The Kepler telescope, along with Europe's 1. COROT planet-hunting probe, present SETI with another option: looking for alien-made structures that perturb their planet's passing light.
The objects could be things like lightweight solar sails or a kind of alien cell phone tower used for interstellar communications.
"It opens a new window for SETI," Luc Arnold, an astronomer with France’s Observatoire de Haute-Provence, told Discovery News.
Four years ago, Arnold published a paper in The Astrophysical Journal describing what the light curves of three alien objects might look like.
"We could imagine other kinds of shapes. There is no limit," Arnold said. "The aim of my paper was to show that non-spherical objects would be able to be detected from the light curve signatures."
"I'm hoping that with Kepler we will have a lot of data to look at," he added. "Maybe we will discover something interesting."
Kepler is scheduled to be launched March 5 on an unmanned Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Say, we find these extra terrestrials. We're not gonna hop on over and be like, "Hey man. How the hell are ya?! We come in peace!"

I think that would be suicide. And they're looking for Earth-like organisms. Which is fine, if that's what they're looking for. But I think they need to examine just how TINY other "life" out there may be. [Or large?] I think they need to stop searching for 'civilized' life and just target 'life' in general.

Any thoughts?

Keute wrote:Say, we find these extra terrestrials. We're not gonna hop on over and be like, "Hey man. How the hell are ya?! We come in peace!"

I think that would be suicide. And they're looking for Earth-like organisms. Which is fine, if that's what they're looking for. But I think they need to examine just how TINY other "life" out there may be. [Or large?] I think they need to stop searching for 'civilized' life and just target 'life' in general.

Any thoughts?

You are correct. But should it not be possibly as life as we cannot even imagine it?

It is possible. If we had seen everything [and knew everything] we wouldn't be so curious! :O

Keute wrote:It is possible. If we had seen everything [and knew everything] we wouldn't be so curious! :O

Sure we would, then we would wonder and be curious about why we don't have anything new to wonder and be curious about.

And as far as those aliens go, beware, for they are here and already walk among us.