Let me thank everyone who has offered a contribution in response to my
posting.  I have learned a great deal from these messages and am reassured
that our Earthly transmissions cannot reach distant aliens.

Hostile predators would not have reached us here yet, in any case, since we
have only had radio traffic for about 100 years.

The background noise in the Universe will protect us, as I see now.  If it
might need a terawatt power source to reliably reach a neighbouring star,
any alien that picks up our present transmissions would have to be very
close already.  Likewise it seems unlikely that intelligent aliens would be
pointing a power source of that magnitude out into their surrounding space
or towards us, except as part of some sort of search strategy.

Once again, I thank all who sent in messages.

Clive Abramovich Delmonte

"Rob Dekker" <rob@verific.com> wrote in message
news:DR4Hc.7828$lF6.3693@newssvr25.news.prodigy.com...

"Clive Abramovich Delmonte" <c.delmonte@tesco.net> wrote in message

news:hWUGc.163$I74.19@newsfe3-win.ntli.net...

I had this awful thought.  I now know why we shall never receive any
communications from outer space from intelligent life forms.

Of course there are parts of the Universe far older than ours and any
intelligent life there is likely to far more advanced than we are.
Moreover, they are likely to have consumed much or all of their raw
materials, and their star may be becoming a red giant. They may have

already

despatched their healthier specimens into space to find a new home.

And then there's Earth.  Broadcasting to the Universe that there is

life,

water and food here.  Any predatory intelligent life will already be
changing course for Earth and a liveable habitat, and maintaining radio
silence.

If this were true, then why are they not here yet ?

Any non-predatory life forms will also maintain radio silence
because we might either be trying to trap them into betraying their
location, or because a response from them to us would do the same.

Speculation.

Seti makes the implied mistake of assuming that intelligent life forms

out

there have the same benign motivation as we have in trying to find
intelligent interlocutors elsewhere in the Universe.

This could have dire consequences in a few thousand years' time when
predatory carnivores arrive to eat us.

That gives us a few thousand years to figure out the truth.

This is why intelligent life in space will never communicate with us.

We

are doves in a Universe of sparrowhawks.

This is why Seti should be shut down immediately.

This is why Seti should continue...

Clive Abramovich Delmonte