When will first radio message from aliens arrive? Scientists think they finally know

SPACE geeks hoping to hear from aliens could be in for a long wait.

Experts say they’ve worked out when they expect extra-terrestrials to make contact.

Don’t expect ET to call in anytime soonGetty

Despite renewed efforts to call out to aliens, we are very unlikely to see that day – nor will our grandchildren for that matter.

Scientists predict we won’t get an answer for a staggering 400,000 years.

The study looks at the challenging problem of so-called CETIs (communicating extra-terrestrial intelligent civilisations).

But that itself is merely an intelligent guess, as the only source of intelligent life we have at the moment is ourselves.

For a long time scientists have made estimations based on something called the Drake equation, which is used to estimate the number of alien beings in the Milky Way.

“Most studies on this problem are based on the Drake equation,” researchers say.

“The obvious difficulty of this method is that it is uncertain and unpredictable to quantify the probability that life may appear on a suitable planet and eventually develop into an advanced communicating civilisation.”

So how on Earth did they come up with a high number like 400,000 years with so little information available?

Well, they used a complex calculation which included galactic star formations and weighed up the possibility of stars hosting Earth-like planets in their habitable zones.

Study authors Wenjie Song and He Gao from Beijing Normal University admit that it will “remain entirely in the domain of hypothesis until any positive detection is made”.

So there’s still hope something could turn up yet.

Until then, scientists want to update the message we beam out into space revealing Earth’s location – even though some believe it could cause an alien invasion.

GettyDigital illustrated UFO on country road.[/caption]

Get all the latest Science newsKeep up-to-date with the top Space & Astronomy storiesAll the latest Archaelogy news from dinosaurs to Ancient artefacts

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk