A famous scientist from the University of Cambridge announced that it will be possible to see aliens in the future thanks to new and powerful telescopes.
Dr. Emily Mitchell believes that instruments such as the James Webb Space Telescope will allow scientists to analyze the atmospheres of other planets in great detail.
Dr. Mitchell hypothesized that alien life could be detected in the next few decades by identifying patterns known as biosignatures.
Powerful new telescopes allow starlight to be analyzed as it passes through a planet's atmosphere, revealing information about its chemical composition.
The scientist believes that it is very likely to find aliens, as life is almost "very common" in the universe.
A team of experts from the United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland, called the Origins Federation, sets out to search for extraterrestrial life. The University of Cambridge collaborates with Harvard University, the University of Chicago and the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH) in Zurich to establish this consortium.
The team indicated that alien life could be found on thousands of planets in the next 10 to 20 years.
"As we begin to investigate other planets, biosignatures can reveal whether the origin of life on Earth was a happy accident or part of the fundamental nature of the universe," Mitchell said. "We only have one biosignature, here on Earth. But if we have, within In 10 or 20, as my fellow optimists suggest, thousands of bio-signatures, we can begin to address this question."
However, others dismiss Dr. Mitchell's optimism. Professor Didier Queloz of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology in Zurich commented that it would be "foolish to predict" when alien life might be discovered, but hinted that samples of Martian rocks might provide the first clue.