I think the chance of detecting another civilization right now is rather slim. Maybe in a couple thousand years. I'll try to explain my reasoning. First, a few

I think the chance of detecting another civilization right now is rather slim. Maybe in a couple thousand years. I'll try to explain my reasoning. First, a few assumptions: - Life and intelligence are physical processes. Given the starting conditions of the universe, they'll eventually pop up somewhere. - Where it pops up, is random and relatively uniformly distributed in space (as for the density, I don't know) - Humans are an average civilization - For most civilizations it takes about the same time than us from the start of the universe to reach our current level of advancement (given that we presume that we're average). Under these assumptions, we have been detectable for roughly the last 100 years. So we can assume, that it's about the same for an average civilization out there. Even if they're plentiful, it's unlikely that the signals from the close ones would have reached us yet. So everything looks dark. It wouldn't surprise me if in a few thousand years, the sky starts lighting up with signals from other worlds, as the signals from the ones that are reaching detectability start getting to us.