Sunday Times 2
‘We will find alien life in 20 years’
Aliens are real – not little green men visiting Earth as depicted in movies, but rather microbial life in our own solar system and intelligent life beyond.
That’s according to two leading Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) researchers, who this week took part in a hearing at the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in Washington DC.
Dr Seth Shostak
During the talk dubbed ‘Astrobiology and the Search for Life in the Universe’, the scientists laid out the evidence and reasoning for believing we are not alone.
The hearing was arranged to review the current state of the science related to the search for life in the universe.
Dr Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the Seti Institute in California, and Dr Dan Wethimer, Directory of Seti Research at the University of California Berkeley, both laid out the science and requested more funding to continue the search.
And, they add, with adequate support it is likely we will find alien life in some form or another within 20 years.
‘In the last two decades, astronomers have uncovered one so-called exoplanet after another,’ Dr Seth Shostak said in his written testimony.
‘The current tally is approximately two thousand, and many more are in the offing thanks to continued analysis of data from NASA’s enormously successful Kepler space telescope.
‘Estimates are that at least 70 per cent of all stars are accompanied by planets, and since the latter can occur in systems rather than as individuals (think of our own solar system), the number of planets in the Milky Way galaxy is of order one trillion.
‘It bears mentioning that the Milky Way is only one of 150 billion galaxies visible to our telescopes – and each of these will have its own complement of planets.’
Dr Shostak goes on to state how Kepler’s primary goal has been to ascertain whether, amongst all these planets, there are habitable worlds like our own.
‘The usual metric for whether a planet is habitable or not is to ascertain whether liquid water could exist on its surface,’ he continues.’Most worlds will either be too cold, too hot or of a type (like Jupiter) that may have no solid surface and be swaddled in noxious gases.
‘Recent analyses of Kepler data suggest that as many as one star in five will have a habitable, Earth-size planet in orbit around it.
‘This number could be too large by perhaps a factor of two or three, but even so it implies that the Milky Way is home to 10 to 80 billion cousins of Earth.
‘There is, in other words, more than adequate cosmic real estate for extraterrestrial life, including intelligent life.’
Dr Wethimer, meanwhile, was equally optimistic and echoed Dr Shostak’s views.
‘It would be bizarre if we are alone,’ he told the committee. ‘It would be a cramped mind that didn’t wonder what other life is out there.’
They also both agreed that Earth has never been visited by aliens.
‘I don’t think that that would be something all the governments would have managed to keep a secret,’ Shostak said.
© Daily Mail, London