Do you not think that actually knowing, really knowing, is a worthy cause in and of itself? To have proof that we are not alone? Even if we can't get there I think that certainty would be a very nice thing to have.
In fact, a much harder task would be to prove that life absolutely doesn't exist anywhere else in the Universe.
So we instinctively believe, but we still want proof. So would the SETI thing provide that definite proof ?
In many ways this is similar to 'does life exist after death'. Either way you stand, it's impossible to absolutely prove it, but some day everyone will definetely find out ;).
Edit: Does anyone know the current thinking of the odds that information could be able to travel faster than light, ie a wormhole? As far as I know they are very slim.
An Einstein-Rosen Bridge is purely theoretical, and mostly a way to understand the equation of general relativity better. The equation requires you to set a few parameters that we have no way of determining currently, and that describe the structure of the universe. By setting those parameters just right, we can imagine really strange things, such as time travel or a wormhole.
But even if those parameters allowed a wormhole, having a traversable wormhole requires exotic matter with negative mass, another thing that we have no tangible proof exists.
In other words, general relativity is so general that it allows behaviour that can't exist in the real world. Computing the odds that information could go through a wormhole is like computing the odds that God exists.
There is a galactic consent that nobody will ever be able to actually visit each other.
And of course, this is pure science fiction :)
The scientific name for a wormhole is an Einstein-Rosen Bridge - named after Nathan Rosen and, obviously, Albert Einstein who conceived the idea.
There are other suggestions for "faster than light" travel, but FTL is a bit of a misnomer because the concepts of FTL aren't about having a velocity that's greater than c (the speed of light in a vacuum), it's about warping or cutting through the fabric of space in a way that makes the distances shorter. A wormhole is just one theoretical method of jumping those distances via a shortcut.
The problem is that in science, if you assume things in a naive way ("What goes up must come down." "Planets travel in circles") you're almost certainly wrong - because the details of physical reality are usually counter-intuitive and unexpected.
So what we really know is:
1. Spacetime is a thing. It has bulk properties described by GR. 2. Er - that's it.
We don't know what spacetime is made of, or what you can do with the things it's made of, or what their properties are.
So I'd classify this as "definitely not known due to lack of knowledge" rather than "definitely not proven."
Proposals like Quantum Dynamical Triangulation, Causal Sets, and Loop Quantum Gravity are beginning to ask what spacetime is made of, but they're barely in their infancy.
The one thing they have in common is the idea that there's a network of - something... - and the reality we recognise propagates across the network.
If the elements are discrete - and they almost certainly are, because of the Planck limit - there will be some moment where an element changes state.
How fast does that happen? What's the mechanism? What limits the state changes? (Adjacency? Some other property?)
It's completely mysterious, and I think it's unwise to make definitive statements about it until it stops being a mystery.
It's rich people playing with their toys.
Leave it completely to rich people and companies to waste their money on.
Things will get discovered eventually, by people who are passionate about them.
Edit: corrections.
However, the much more important thing for me is that we'd know we aren't necessarily going to run into some Great Filter [0]. I'd fret a little less about dangerous new technologies if I knew at least one case where a civilization survived.
Lastly, maybe we'd learn something from the signal itself! A new communications protocol, new music, new technologies, insight into how languages work - who knows? Finding out what we have in common with the beings who sent the signal and what we don't would teach us a great deal about what is arbitrary on our world and what's fundamental. It's like growing up in a society with extremely rigid gender roles and then traveling to a country where that's not the case - you get that "Oh I didn't realize women could even have jobs" moment, but potentially with problems that aren't self-imposed.
Just imagine what proof that we're not alone would mean for the world. I'm not positive it would galvanize everyone, but it would surely create new industry and untold number of jobs as we, as a world, decide to try to go and meet them.
Year after year the news reports another big experiement which cost millions to setup, and which claims to "give us answers as to how the universe was created". I just couldn't be less interested. It's rich people (Or taxpayer funded people) playing with their toys.
It must be great fun if space exploration is your hobby, like explorers of days gone by, but for most people it won't have any impact at all on their lives (Apart from wasting their taxes).
Not only is your statement disappointing to hear from anyone presuming to be technically literate, it is objectively wrong.
You would have a similar result if you poured money into alchemy research - lots of side products etc.
[1] Minus the part about it being a waste of taxes; just because people aren't interested doesn't mean it's not worthwhile, because people can be wrong.
If you can't see how that would be one of the most impactful things in human history, I don't think there's any more to discuss.
On the other hand, if they spent their energy sending ships, they would eventually find us, and they would learn phenomenally about technology, science and their place in the world, even before they reach us.
Why would it be hard to determine that we're intelligent? We've clearly created some sort of apparatus for generating sonar. I would imagine that someone listening in our oceans would be able to tell fairly quickly that we're a technical civilization.
Underwater sounds can come from a wide range of sources, including tectonics, natural events and animals. Those did not create some sort of apparatus. Yet, they can have a similar signature.
It is not even a hypothetical situation. A SETI lab spent a lot of time trying to figure out what a particular signature that their telescope picked up was, only to discover it was caused by their microwave oven: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/seti-the-hunt-for-....