Dreaming of finally making contact with aliens? — you’ll have to wait another 1500 years

IF you have dreams of humanity making contact with aliens you may be in for a longer wait than you hoped — if a new theory proposed by scientists is correct.

It’s going to be a long wait until we can meet alien life. Picture: Supplied

IF there are hundreds of alien civilisations out there in the universe why has no one made contact?

Astronomers at Cornell University in the US have developed a new equation attempting to explain this philosophical mystery, also known as the Fermi Paradox, reported The Telegraph UK.

The scientists have calculated that signals from Earth would need to reach half of all the sun systems in the Milky Way to be sure of being picked up by an advanced civilisation. And that is unlikely to happen for 1500 years.

Scientists said we should always keep looking for other life so as not to miss any signals. Picture: Supplied

“We haven’t heard from aliens yet, as space is a big place but that doesn’t mean no one is out there,” said student Evan Solomonides to The Telegraph UK.

“It’s possible to hear any time at all, but it becomes likely we will have heard around 1,500 years from now.”

Solomonides, who is presenting the equation at the Astronomical Society’s meeting on June 16 in San Diego, said we should always keep looking so as not to miss any signals.

Aliens are also likely to first hear TV and radio signals that are being sent into space continuously as a byproduct of broadcasting and which have been travelling from Earth for 80 years at the speed of light.

But these transmissions would be incomprehensible for extraterrestrials who would not be able to decode them and decipher the language spoken.

At present Earth’s broadcast signals have reached every star within about 80 light years from the sun, around 8531 stars and 3555 Earth-like planets. But our Milky Way galaxy alone contains 200 billion stars so there is still a long way to go.

Last year Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and Professor Stephen Hawking announced a multi-million pound project to hunt for signs of alien life.