We will find aliens within 25 years, claim researchers

New Delhi: The search for alien signals started in 1960, when pioneering astronomer Frank Drake scanned two sun-like stars with an 85-foot-wide (26 meters) West Virginia antenna.It has ramped up considerably over the past half-century, as astronomers have taken advantage of significant advances in electronics and digital technology.Now Seth Shostak, an American astronomer with the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, has made the prediction that intelligent life on other planets will be found within 25 years.Shostak said this while speaking at NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium 2014 at Stanford University.He said “I think we'll find E.T. within two dozen years using different sorts of experiments.”“Instead of looking at a few thousand star systems, which is the tally so far, we will have looked at maybe a million star systems 24 years from now,” Shostak said. “A million might be the right number to find something.”He said that the hunt for alien life is a three way race between researchers looking for advanced, intelligent civilizations; scientists looking at solar system bodies like Mars and Europa for simple organisms; and researchers focused on finding signs of microbial life on nearby exoplanets using future instruments.He believes the key is to keep scanning the skies looking for alien-produced electromagnetic signals.He also mentioned that the bottom line is, like one in five stars has at least one planet where life might spring up.‘That's a fantastically large percentage. ‘That means in our galaxy, there's on the order of tens of billions of Earth-like worlds.'SETI warns that to continue the search, they'll need more cash. Shostak says that the 24-year estimate is dependent on “continued SETI funding, which is in dire straits right now.”