NASA’s chief scientist Ellen Stofan has made a bold claim that humanity will make contact with alien life within 20-30 years.
During a panel hosted by NASA in order to discuss the organization’s search for alien life and habitable worlds, Stofan said: “We know where to look. We know how to look.”
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Unfortunately, NASA isn’t explicitly looking for the humanoid aliens we’ve seen time and time again in Hollywood blockbusters, with it being more likely that we will instead discover living, minuscule microbes as we continue our journey through space. Stofan, denying us of our dream of one day shaking hands with a life form that looks like an extra from X-Files, continued: “We are not talking about little green men. We are talking about little microbes.”
NASA’s Ellen Stofan says we may come into contact with alien microbes over the course of the next few decades.
Her claim was echoed by her colleague and former astronaut John Grunsfeld, who added: “I think we’re one generation away in our solar system, whether it’s on an icy moon or on Mars, and one generation [away] on a planet around a nearby star.”
While that seems like a lofty claim from the organization, they have been making steady ground in continuing humanity’s pursuit further into our own solar system, what with its Mars Science Laboratory mission seeing them continue to explore the red planet with the help of the Curiosity Mars rover, an automated motor vehicle that is currently doing the rounds across the planet’s Gale Crater.
It’s saddening that NASA doesn’t believe we’ll make contact with a friendly bunch of E.T.’s (or volatile Xenomorphs) in the near future, but we’d still welcome alien microbes into our knowledge of existing life forms with open arms, if the chance presents itself over the course of the next 2 to 3 decades.
[Via NPR]
Photo: Getty Images
