Quote Originally Posted by Alric View Post
One thing you need to keep in mind, is how dangerous space can be as well. Its not enough to be as smart as human to survive. First you need to be able to colonize other plants before your home planet is destoryed. This isn't an easy task as there are a large number of things that can kill off a spieces. Such as a giant rock flying into the planet. Which is actually fairly common. Also things like huge volcanos can take you out. Or you can have a nuclear war like people worry about today. Or some plague that kills everyone. This is all stuff we havn't escaped ourself, and could very well wipe us out before we contact anyone.

Next you need to escape your solar system before it gets destroyed. Countless things will take out a solar system. Any kind of problem with your sun is going to kill you. Even then you just keep moving up. A black hole any where near you, will wipe out huge areas of space. Some people believe there are black holes in the center of all the galaxies. Whats worse galaxies can even crash into each other!

Even be able to space travel isn't going to save you when an entire galaxy is taken out. The universe is a deadly and unforgiving place. Even if there are aliens far smarter than us, doesn't mean they lived.
Well, literarly sending something (whether it's humans or robots) into space really is the only way of discovering non-intelligent life (after all, I'm not talking about colonisation here). If there is intelligent life, interstellar telephone messages really would be the way to go I assume, which is what SETI is all about.