The Search for Alien Life Is On
The Search Is On Nick KaloterakisNew missions and discoveries on Earth, within our solar system and beyond are bringing us closer than ever to finding alien life on other planets "The genesis of life is as inevitable as the formation of atoms," is how Andrei Finkelstein, the director of the Russian Academy of Sciences's Applied Astronomy Institute, explained his ambitious timeline for finding alien life to an audience of astrobiologists and reporters in June. "There is life on other planets, and we will find it in 20 years." But Tullis Onstott, a geologist at Princeton University who specializes in astrobiology, makes an even more ambitious prediction. "In the next 15 years," he says, "we will likely discover life on an exoplanet near us." Scientists have long predicted the discovery of extraterrestrial life, but Finkelstein and Onstott have good reason to be optimistic. Researchers are devoting more resources to the search for...