Jill Tarter

Director: Center for SETI Research
SETI Institute, 1984 - 2012
Emeritus Chair for SETI Research

How will humanity first discover ET Life?
Best guess: Technosignatures
While the astronomical community is planning for large telescopes, or robotic explorers that could uncover biosignatures within our solar system or in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets, they are still far in the future. We are conducting SETI searches today that might succeed tomorrow.
SETI or the search for technosignatures, is one way we could succeed in finding life beyond Earth, but along the way to that discovery SETI has a very important job to do, a job that can influence our long future, even if no signal is ever found.
The process of thinking about SETI, talking about SETI, listening to talks about SETI, and conducting a globally coordinated search, all act as a mirror that shows us ourselves from a new, cosmic perspective. A mirror that trivializes the differences among us. We all need to take on the responsibility of protecting us from ourselves. We need to think and act and organize ourselves globally, creating another reality in which we see ourselves as Earthlings.