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If about half the stars in our galaxy orbiting a Sun-like planet in the right place to have a temperature favorable to the emergence of life, then in the Milky Way would have tens of billions of planets like the Earth.

Now, to know how many of them may be intelligent life and technological prowess with which we could communicate by radio, should know how likely it arises when the conditions of a planet are right, how likely to evolve to create intelligent beings, and finally, how likely is that they form a technology-oriented society.

Considering all these factors is beyond the domain of astronomy and science competition as biochemistry, biology or sociology. However, according to estimates by several scientists, it is possible that one of every hundred planets emergence of a technically advanced civilization. Therefore, in the Milky Way would be a hundred million planets that at some point in its development, there was a technological civilization.

Not all civilizations inevitably evolve towards technological societies. In the universe there may be many poets composed of (possibly survive better), very respectable indeed. Unfortunately, we can never communicate with them using radio waves. Therefore, our focus is technological civilizations consider not because the “most advanced” or the best in the cosmos, but because with them we can only contact.

More urgently hope to know how many civilizations are there, somewhere in the Milky Way, waiting to communicate with us, it is important to resolve a crucial problem: to know the longevity of a technologically advanced civilization. How lives a civilization of this nature before succumbing to self-destruct or to problems caused by it and is unable to solve?

The only technologically advanced civilization that we know is ours, and lived as such (i.e, ability to communicate using radio waves to other points in space) about 60 years. That is, within very small compared to the life of the galaxy.

If advanced civilizations lacked the wisdom to overcome the problems associated with technological progress, and only lived (for example) one hundred years, the hundred millions of civilizations in our galaxy would already be extinct.

To know how many are alive today, just find out what percentage one hundred years in relation to the age of the galaxy, a life of around ten billion years. The ratio is one to one hundred million. That means that today would live only a hundred million that have existed in the Milky Way, our own.

But we are not so pessimistic. Suppose a technically advanced civilization lived a long time, a hundred million years, for example, and solve all the problems that are presented. There would be all over the galaxy a million civilizations would be alive today and which could, in principle, to establish contact by radio waves.

This number (one million civilizations) may seem large, but the possibilities of communication are less if we recall that the typical distance between two stars is about four light years. Even if we could know exactly which star has the planet where the nearest civilization to our own, the conversation with its members may not be easy. If at this point were to say Hi, our call would take just over four years to reach them if you respond right away it would be another 4 years before his response to our greeting came back. Therefore, it is a pretty unexciting possibility of talking on the phone back and forth, live and live with our neighbors.

Papers should be in one direction. We may send a large amount of information in messages specially encoded so that they understand, and hope that someday, someone who will listen, be aware of our existence in the cosmos and learn something from us.

Similarly, we should listen to satellite radio bands appropriate to see if someone, from somewhere in the galaxy, and a message is radiated by publicizing his presence and telling how the civilization to which it belongs. It’s like practicing amateur activity, but on a cosmic scale

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