Alien life throughout the solar system – not just Mars – is a real possibility. Outside the solar system, astronomers have discovered thousands of worlds – and they estimate our galaxy alone could be filled with hundreds of billions of planets. Many could be similar to Earth, with oceans, an atmosphere, and, yes, life. In the coming decades, new space probes and telescopes will search for signs of life in the solar system and beyond. “We have a decent chance for finding Earth-like planets and evidence for life by sometime in the early 2030s,” says Jim Kasting, a planetary scientist at Penn State University in the US. And for the first time in human history, scientists have a plan and the means to answer the question of whether we’re alone. “The fact that science can actually apply itself to the question instead of it being purely philosophical is very exciting,” says Jason Wright, an astronomer also at Penn State....
Credit BBC /skywatch
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