The main reasons why we haven't met aliens yet could offer fans extraterrestrial fans some hope in the near future.
SETI scientist, Jill Tarter, explained how two main barriers stand in our way of making contact.
Speaking to TechCruch, she said, we have, so far, only "searched for an incredible small portion of the universe for intelligent life."
In an effort to contextualise our search of intelligent life, she added: "if you set the search space equal to the size of the Earth's oceans, we've only examined one glass of water from those oceans for intelligent life. We've only looked at one small part of a very large picture."
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The second reason, she continued, is that we have not "invented the right way to do this yet."
In January, scientists proposed another theory less promising than Tarter's.
Aditya Chopra and Charles H. Lineweaver published a paper suggesting that aliens are extinct.
However, Tarter seemed unperturbed by these predictions. She told TechCrunch: "If they [aliens] showed up on our doorstep, that means they have technologies that are considerably advanced with respect to ours."
She added: "And because of that, they're going to be the ones that set the rules."