We'll find alien life in 10 or 20 years, says NASA
Nasa scientists claim they have the technology to find life beyond earth, but they're looking for 'little microbes' - not little green men
Are we alone in the universe? Top Nasa scientists say the answer is almost certainly "no."
"I believe we are going to have strong indications of life beyond earth in the next decade and definitive evidence in the next 10 to 20 years," Ellen Stofan, chief scientist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said at a public panel in Washington this week.
"We know where to look, we know how to look, and in most cases we have the technology," she said.
Jeffery Newmark, interim director of heliophysics at the agency said: "It's definitely not an 'if' - it's a 'when'."
However, if visions of alien invasions are dancing in your head, you can let those go. "We are not talking about little green men," Stofan said. "We are talking about little microbes."
Over the course of an hour-long presentation, Nasa leaders described a flurry of recent discoveries that suggest we are closer than ever to figuring out where we might find life in the solar system and beyond.
Jim Green, director of planetary science at Nasa, cited a study that analysed the atmosphere above Mars' polar ice caps and suggests that 50 per cent of the planet's northern hemisphere once had oceans up to 1.5km deep, and it had that water for up to 1.2 billion years.