Space Expert Claims We Could Soon Find Life On Other Worlds

Space Expert Claims We Could Soon Find Life On Other Worlds

Tuesday 5 August 2014

Astronomers are standing on a "great threshold" of space exploration that could see extra-terrestrial life being discovered in the next 20 years, an expert has claimed.

Life beyond the Earth seems "inevitable" given the immensity of the universe, according to US planetary scientist Dr Sara Seager.

In the coming decades, chemical fingerprints of life written in the atmospheres of planets orbiting nearby stars could be found by the next generation of space telescopes.

Dr Seager, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: "We can say with certainty that, for the first time in human history, we are on the verge of being able to search for signs of life beyond our solar system."

Astronomers now know that statistically, every star in our galaxy, the Milky Way, should have at least one planet, and small rocky worlds like the Earth are common.

"Our own galaxy has 100 billion stars and our universe has upwards of 100 billion galaxies, making the chance for life elsewhere seem inevitable based on sheer probability," said Dr Seager.

In the next decade or two, "potentially habitable" exoplanets will have been found with atmospheres that can be studied by sophisticated space telescopes.