Yeh. On a lighter note, Forbes:
“It is not hyperbolic to suggest that scientists could very well discover extraterrestrial intelligence within two decades’ time or less, given resources to conduct the search,” Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, said in testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
So there you have it. Aliens by 2034. That’s actually a few decades ahead of the date of first contact in the fictional “Star Trek” series — April 5, 2063.
It is worth noting that in the last decade, Shostak was floating the date 2025 as a likely end to our apparent cosmic isolation, and as recently as February he was talking about a date “two dozen years out.” So, clearly Shostak isn’t trying to win any bets by calling the specific date we find E.T., but rather the point is that the current rate of technological advancement makes it likely that we’ll be able to find that evidence within a single generation.
Ah, that raises a non-decaf question: What if they are not?
To understand why the deadline will just keep being extended from 2034 and beyond, see The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (cosmology).