Russian scientists expect to meet aliens by 2031
A view of the Whirlpool Galaxy taken by Hubble.
Credit: Reuters/NASA
MOSCOW |
MOSCOW (Reuters Life!) - Russian scientists expect humanity to encounter alien civilizations within the next two decades, a top Russian astronomer predicted Monday.
"The genesis of life is as inevitable as the formation of atoms... Life exists on other planets and we will find it within 20 years," Andrei Finkelstein, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Applied Astronomy Institute, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.
Speaking at an international forum dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life, Finkelstein said 10 percent of the known planets circling suns in the galaxy resemble Earth.
If water can be found there, then so can life, he said, adding that aliens would most likely resemble humans with two arms, two legs and a head.
"They may have different color skin, but even we have that," he said.
Finkelstein's institute runs a program launched in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War space race to watch for and beam out radio signals to outer space.
"The whole time we have been searching for extraterrestrial civilizations, we have mainly been waiting for messages from space and not the other way," he said.
(Writing by Alissa de Carbonnel; editing by Paul Casciato)
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The nearest planets circling a star which the astronomers have discovered until now are hundreds of years-light remote from Earth.
Once they will detect an alien life, how will they contact them? The radio signal will take hundreds of year to reach the aliens and their reply will spend the same time to reach us.
The dialogue through radiowaves will be impossible, not speaking about having a physical contact with these purported aliens.
These scientists would have rather not spending money in so insane issues.
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