Scientists may brush aside UFO sightings and abduction claims, but they are getting closer to proving life exists far from earth.
New radio telescopes are giving astronomers a better chance of picking up that elusive extraterrestrial radio signal. Advances in computing power are improving the chance of hearing an alien signal from radio 'noise' generated by natural and man-made sources.
'The speed of the search is doubling every 18 months,' said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Seti Institute in California, which has been searching for extraterrestrials scientifically for 50 years.
Over the past 15 years, scientists have found more than 500 planets outside our solar system. They're still looking for one that orbits a star at the right 'Goldilocks zone' - not too cold and not too hot - just like the earth and its distance to the sun.
The last milestone discovery took place only a few weeks ago, when Nasa's Kepler mission found the smallest planet outside our solar system. Shostak said it was 'very likely that there is a great deal of alien life in the depths of space. There might even be some nearby'.
Places close by - astronomically speaking - such as the three moons of Jupiter and two moons of Saturn, possibly contain liquid water. If so, they may have microbial life, or life you would need a microscope to see. But in star systems at least tens of light years away, there could be life that has evolved to be intelligent. 'Our experiments are designed to find evidence of such life, although we haven't been successful so far,' he said.
