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Zooming into just one galaxy, ours, getting a feel for just how hopelessly vast it is, then recalling the Hubble Deep Field's panorama full of countless more galaxies an eternity away, brought one single thought to my mind:

If there's life out there, and at that scale, there simply must be... The probability of us ever finding it before our sun collapses most likely rounds to zero.

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Actually I have a question ... maybe you can't answer it. But as we are looking for radio signals from other civilizations, what are we doing to make sure we continue to send out strong, unencrypted, easy to decipher signals from earth?

To say that IP law will result in all terrestrial signals being encrypted in say, 150 years, is not unfathomable. Then, at that point, if the encryption is good enough, it will just look like noise to a would be discoverer of us.

I would hope that civilization is also attempting to discover life or to be discovered and such is broadcasting a strong unencrypted signal.

Maybe that is a good thing.

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