In a recent discussion forum, we were talking about possibilities of life on other planets. The subject of Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence or S.E.T.I. (for short) came up.
The discussion was fairly split. Some loyal to the cause of SETI and believe firmly in what they are doing, and those that thought it was a total waste of time.

Someone mentioned:

The universe is somewhere around 13 billion years old.
Earth may be somewhere around 5 billion years old.
In 5 billion years we developed life, and intelligent life at that! (Arguably) Wink
that leaves 8 billion years before that.
It is plausible that somewhere life evolved and given the possible head start
they could have had on us, could be billions of years ahead of us.

Much back and forth about the worthiness of the program, so I then responded:
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First of all; all electromagnetic radiation (which includes radio waves, microwaves, visible light, ultra-violet, x-rays, and gamma rays) will spread out with distance and will, at some point, become too dim to be observable, so we may not even receive anything understandable anyway. OR we may have already received something (if it was in the radio spectrum) and we filtered it out, because it was merely background static, mixed in with that of nebulae.

Even if there is intelligent life out there, (which I believe there may be) by the time we receive a message, the civilization may be extinct, or just so evolved beyond our own level (technologically or biologically) that we couldn't communicate with them anyway.

If there was a species out there that sent messages out into space, they would have had to do it around the same (or similar) timeframe of development that we are in. Now keep in mind, that this would be a time frame of only about 100 years out of possible thousands, or even millions of years of scientific development.

That could have been billions of years ago. Even if they are still sending messages out... to unknown recipients(or each other), if they are even a bit more advanced than us, do you really think that they would still be using the radio spectrum to send those messages/signals? If a species did become intelligent, and it's civilization lasted long enough to get to our level, or beyond; if they were 50 years more advanced than us(much less a thousand? Or a billion or two?) They would not be using radio spectrum. Many researchers believe that in less than 50 years we will be hardly using that spectrum ourselves, if at all.

I think they (Extra Terrestrial Life) would have a means of communicating that is so far beyond us now, the comparison would be worse than cro-magnum man trying to figure out encrypted messages sent via satellite, with no computer. We don't have the capability to receive such messages, language used, programming language used, or even an understanding of the means of which the message is being transmitted.

If there is life out there, I don't believe that we can understand there messages, or even HOW they are sending it. If we do want to reach out to the stars, we may be better off putting that money towards other research like new power sources( Zero Point Energy, antimatter, Solar Power, fusion, or a more efficient fission), or Propulsion research (Ion thrusters, Solar Sail, magnetic field engine) These would be more useful uses of that money.

Get us out there. Advance the technology for advanced navigation, optical computers, more efficient manufacturing processes, Cryo-Technology. Once some of these are done, And with a more advanced knowledge of physics, we may reach the stars.

In the meantime, we continue to explore our own solar system through telescopes, rovers, and manned missions. So that we can grasp a more solid understanding of the universe one step at a time, before we actually get there.