Quote from shashdev :

That means it took 6000 years to reach a level where we could have the technology to start trying to contact other forms of intelligent life.

Leaving Earth's atmosphere is nowhere enough to actually be able to meet other forms of intelligent life - Our technology is not advanced enough to a) travel fast enough far enough and b) sustain a human alive long enough for such a journey.

You can forget about it.

With new plasma rocket tech there is a possibility of sending a probe to another system within our life time (although we may not be alive to see the results).
http://www.physorg.com/news174031552.html

I don't care about my grandchildren, bro. Give me a faster rocket NOW.

Well, the scientists belive they have found something that indicates that things are possible to go faster than light itself, putting the whole relative (or how it is spelled) theory to shame. Time will show, but it would be really interesting!

Quote from Hyperactive :

Relative theory. Giggles

Quote from anttt69 :

With new plasma rocket tech there is a possibility of sending a probe to another system within our life time (although we may not be alive to see the results).
http://www.physorg.com/news174031552.html

Yesterday the CERN scientists said they had measured a particle moving faster then the speed of light. Speaking of ridiculously fast things and new tech.

Of course it may have been a faulty measurement or something, and will require a lot more research to prove... but if it actually turns out to be true..

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WO ... rland.science/?hpt=ieu_c1

Relative theory. Giggles

Relativity theory. Even if the cern tests actually proved that faster than light is possible it does not mean relativity theory is totally wrong. A lot of astronomy, electric tech and other things of light work on the principles of relativity theory. It is also a theory that has been proved and teste countless times with real life tests and data and it has always been proven true. It is after all a theory backed by facts.

We've already made single particles travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum before, and that didn't 'break' the special theory of relativity. Besides, I'm sure the theory isn't complete, just like Newton's Law of Gravity isn't correct in all cases - it'll just lead onto an expansion of various theories to account for newly observed phenomenon.

More than likely the time measurement was out...

Scientists already agreed that Einstein's theory wasn't complete, as it was not able to explain black holes. They say "it stops at event horizon". Also, it doesn't apply to very small particles on quantum level, so still a lot to be "broken" and discovered... so, breaking the Universal Speed Limit won't be such a surprise (to me) as there are many, many, many things that we still don't know about.

What is also interesting (to stretch this subject even more) is that there are two theories about the end of the Universe, Big Crunch and Big Freeze... but none of them mentions anything about black holes and their role in it. We know that if Universe continues to spread it will stretch apart (don't know the exact english word for it) all the matter to it's tiniest bits, as this stretching is stronger than gravity (as much as we know today). But what about black holes? Their force of gravity is much, much, much larger than anything we know and understand today. Will they play a part in confronting the forces of stretching? Is their immense force of gravity strong enough to change those two scenarios?

On topic:
Scientists recently discovered a new, possibly habitable planet 36 light years away that is on just the right distance from its star to be able to hold liquid water. It is 3.6 times the mass of the Earth but only 1.4 times its gravity, which means it can hold the atmosphere too. Its solar system is a billion years older than ours, so it is very possible that this planet held life long before Earth did... meaning a billion years more for intelligent species to evolve.
Existence of life is not proven yet, but chances for that are big.