We will find alien life in 20 years: Leading astronomers say it would be bizarre if we were alone in the universe
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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 yesterday took part in a hearing at the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in Washington DC.
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.
Dr Seth Shostak (stock image shown) and Dr Dan Werthimer of the Seti Institute yesterday laid out their research to Congress regarding the search for alien life. They say with adequate funding it is almost a certainty we will find alien life in 20 years, be it intelligent or microbial
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.
THE HISTORY OF SETI
In 1959, Cornell physicists Gieuseppi Cocconi and Philip Morrison published an article discussing the potential to use microwave radio to communicate between stars.
A year later in 1960, astronomer Frank Drake conducted the first hunt for alien life with an 85-foot (25 metres) antenna in West Virgina, but after two months concedes defeat.
In the 1960s, Soviet Union performs extensive searches for ET, again with no success.
In the 1970s Nasa began to take an interest in Seti, with the chances of success seemingly growing as technology advanced.
In 1988, Nasa began sweeping surveys of the night sky for signals, but Congress terminated funding a few years later.
The independent Seti Institute, established in 1984, took over the job.
In 1992 the first planet outside the solar system is confirmed, an almost certainly uninhabitable world orbiting a pulsar.
In 2009 Nasa's Kepler telescope launches and, over the next few years, finds hundreds of planets.
And just last month, the first planet of a similar size to Earth and at the correct distance from its parent star to host water, called Kepler 186-f, was found.
It is the most likely place that has been found that could host life as we know it.
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.'
The two astronomers cite discoveries by Nasa's Kepler telescope as imperative to their research. Most notably, the telescope has found thousands of planets and several could be habitable such as Kepler-186f (pictured). They estimate there are 10 to 80 billion 'Earth cousins' in our Milky Way alone
Using resources such as the Allen Telescope Array (pictured) Seti astronomers hope they will one day detect a signal from an intelligent extraterrestrial race, either a message that has been sent by accident or random 'noise' like what is emitted from Earth
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.
'If they were really here I think everyone would know that.'
The hearing comes just after a new Nasa book was published that suggested our planet could have been visited by aliens before.
The book is titled Archaeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication and was edited by Dr Douglas Vakoch, Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the Seti Institute.
With the help of other experts he tackles a number of topics including the prospect of life on other planets and the means through which we might send or receive a message.
In one section Dr William Edmondson from the University of Birmingham considers the possibility that rock art on Earth is of extraterrestrial origin.
'We can say little, if anything, about what these patterns signify, why they were cut into rocks, or who created them,' he writes.
'For all intents and purposes, they might have been made by aliens.'
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