Humanity will detect aliens by 2040, researcher says
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}April 17, 2012: A NASA Hubble Space Telescope composite image shows star cluster NGC 2060, a loose collection of stars in 30 Doradus, located in the heart of the Tarantula Nebula 170,000 light years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. (Reuters)
Intelligent extraterrestrial beings are out there, and we’ll be meeting them shortly – perhaps within the next 25 years, according to one scientist.
A researcher for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence says humanity will detect aliens by the year 2040, LiveScience.com reports.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}That’s because, by then, astronomers will have scanned enough star systems to detect alien-produced electromagnetic signals.
“I think we’ll find E.T. within two dozen years using these sorts of experiments,” SETI’s Seth Shostak said during a Feb. 6 discussion at the 2014 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts symposium at Stanford University. “Instead of looking at a few thousand star systems, which is the tally so far, we will have looked at maybe a million star systems” by 2040, he said.
Part of Shostak’s confidence is based on progress made by NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope, which has turned up evidence that the Milky Way galaxy is packed with worlds capable of supporting life as we know it.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Shostak believes one in five stars has at least one planet where life might be possible – a “fantastically large percentage” that means there are potentially tens of billions of Earth-like worlds in the galaxy.
And if, on some of those worlds, intelligent life exists, then they’re probably doing what we’re doing, Shostak said – sending out radio transmissions as they listen, patiently and alertly, for someone to make contact with them.