Phil Moskowitz: I doubt any species that will last any appreciable time will be nearly as retarded as us.

For any creature that relies primarily on sight and is far enough along intelligence wise and socially that they can choose to do things and the time they want to do them regardless of the time of day, having lights will be useful.

Lights in themselves aren't retarded, and this is a pretty cool idea. It won't find every intelligent species out there, as not all will be as reliant on sight as we are, but it ought to find a few. With enough time and effort looking at every remotely viable planet out there.

Bathia_Mapes: [1.bp.blogspot.com image 270x304]

Is that streetlamp supposed to look like an angry god, giant robot, or a UFO?

cptjeff: Bathia_Mapes: [1.bp.blogspot.com image 270x304]

Is that streetlamp supposed to look like an angry god, giant robot, or a UFO?

UFO.

OMG! It's an idea from the 1950s!

I'll be charitable and assume this was a deadline-required filler piece rather than a story anyone involved thought was actually new.


DarnoKonrad: I don't see any reason to assume ET evolved from creatures terrified of the dark.

Maybe, maybe not. Easier to look for what you know you could find.

Generally speaking, the most profitable method is to look for anomalous heat. Most everything winds up as heat at one level or another, and most extrapolated and known technology produces heat signatures that don't match natural signatures. A big IR telescope outside our atmosphere could see lots of stuff . . . if it's there.

Fermi Paradox suggests it's probably not visible, though, and probably not by accident, but who knows.

the vanishingly small probability of life starting naturally

This is a common but complete assumption. We honestly know virtually nothing about this probability, even for life similar to our own. We know of only one significant location where we're 100% certain there is or isn't life -- Earth -- and we're not at all sure that it only arose once. Recent findings suggest it arose earlier than previously thought, probably under conditions where we previously thought it would have been impossible.

And, again, that's just for life similar to our own. We don't even know if there's dissimilar life on this planet, perhaps deep underground. We're pretty sure there isn't life similar to our own in a cosmologically vanishingly small number of other places. And that's all we know.

That said, we probably (by which I mean a statistic probability) shouldn't be spending tax dollars looking for alien life. For one thing, what does seem unlikely, for various reasons, is that we'll be able to have meaningful informational contact with them. More importantly, contact with an alien culture would most likely violently and negatively disrupt our own cultures.

You can look this up if you like. Admittedly, we don't have concrete historical experience with alien cultures, but history's been pretty consistent as far as what happens when a less technologically advanced culture encounters a more technologically advanced one. Even when the more advanced one has the best of intentions, it's almost always a disaster.

DarnoKonrad: I don't see any reason to assume ET evolved from creatures terrified of the dark.

What about if they evolved from creatures that couldn't see in the dark, so developed artificial light sources to aid them in their night time activities?