A prominent scientist has made a bold claim that we will discover alien life by the year 2075 and has even ventured to speculate on their appearance.
A British space expert has expressed her strong belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life within our universe, predicting that such life forms will be encountered by humans within the next fifty years.
Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock, affiliated with University College London’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, shared her views with the Daily Mail. She anticipates a ‘positive detection’ of alien life on another planet by 2075, suggesting that it might be ‘far superior’ to human life.
“In the whole of the universe, there are approximately 200 billion galaxies,” she explained in the interview. “And so although certain conditions were in place for life to start here on Earth, and this is the only example we have of life, I’m absolutely convinced that there’s life out there, because with so many stars, so many planets, why would it just occur here?”
Dame Aderin-Pocock made this forecast in anticipation of the Royal Institution Christmas lectures, a series of esteemed public science talks in the UK that address significant unanswered questions about space.
She attributes her belief in extraterrestrial life largely to the Drake equation, a ‘numbers game’ that suggests the immense number of planets in the universe implies a high likelihood of life beyond Earth.
For example, the Milky Way alone contains around 300 billion stars, each potentially with its own solar system similar to ours.
We already have ‘tantalising glimpses’ of potential life on far-off planets, referencing the recent finding of an exoplanet 124 light-years away where atmospheric molecules were detected that could indicate life.
However, she acknowledged the ‘challenge’ in gathering definitive proof of extraterrestrial existence.
“But to put my money where my mouth is, in terms of getting a positive detection, I would say definitely in the next 50 years,” she affirmed.
As for the appearance of aliens, she speculated that it is unlikely we will encounter green, humanoid creatures as often depicted in films, nor will there be an E.T.-like entity descending from a spaceship.
Rather, she suggests that extraterrestrial life might resemble ‘grey sludge’.
“We might find something that does evolve, and that can communicate – and of course, their technology might be far superior to ours,” she elaborated.
“I love the idea of aliens on the other side of the moon looking back at us, hoping we’ll ‘grow up’ soon.”
“If there is any form of life, we need to make sure it is totally isolated,” she emphasized, indicating the importance of preventing human contact with alien life.
“But we’re building facilities to do just that so we can analyse them. Because it’s hard to take all our scientific equipment to Mars, for example, but if we can bring samples from Mars to Earth and analyse them here on Earth, we can get a lot more understanding.”
“Of course, the ultimate solution is to send me. Some people retire and potter around their garden, and my retirement plan is to potter around Mars.”