Searching for Clever Life

It is perhaps the most audacious initiative in astrobiology, a research discipline that is itself hardly modest. SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, is more than just another way to hunt for life beyond Earth; it could be a wormhole through astrobiology's apple.

Rather than waiting for the payoff from multi-billion-dollar efforts to churn the sands of Mars or plumb the stygian depths of Europa or Enceladus—rather than drumming our fingers anticipating new telescopes that could sense distant life's spectral signature—SETI offers the possibility of quickly cutting to the chase. Its goal: find a simple radio signal that would immediately betray the existence of biology that has evolved to a level as sophisticated as our own.

In other words, with a relatively simple experiment, SETI offers the prospect of answering many of the most difficult questions in astrobiology: Has life sprung up elsewhere? On what sort of worlds does this happen? Has any of this life become intelligent and technological?

link.