SETI

Finding even a trace of an alien signal would be world-changing. It will be difficult but worth every effort. Advanced civilizations will have developed the means to communicate faster than light, probably within a few hundred years of their own invention of the radio, but rather than ceasing radio transmissions they could be expected to be benevolent and continue to send instructions for FTL communication as well as for other advanced technologies, such as transmutation of matter, intergalactic telepresence, universal communication via signals transmitted through the quantum foam, and so on and so on - the complete Encyclopedia Galactica one might imagine. If we are not destroyed by some religious nut or some greedy biotech or nanotech company, CO2 or methane released from melting permafrost or warming oceans, a new plague, an asteroid, etc., we will invent these technologies on our own, but our best bet is to learn from those who passed through our stage of development eons ago. Research on technologies that endanger humanity needs to be moved far away from Earth down the Sun's gravity well. We need to give humanity's future priority over global profiteering by seizing control over the parasites who run the world and who perceive everything and everyone, including each other, as resources to be exploited. We need to move as many people as possible to self-sustaining off-world habitats. We need to remember that the only thing that has ever made lasting improvements to the human condition is Science. Or, we can become one of those civilizations whose radio signals just fade away.