"In 10 to 20 years we could locate alien life"

In ten to twenty years, telescopes could locate more planets where life is possible, and special attention is paid to the planetary system "TRAPPIST-1", 40 light years away from Earth.

Sasha Hinkley, an astrophysicist from the University of Exeter, believes that humans will detect the existence of life on distant planets in the next few years.

Hinckley, one of the most famous British astrophysicists, explains that "powerful tools", such as the ten billion dollar space telescope "James Webb", are one step away from detecting "biosignatures", i.e. atmospheres on some exoplanets, reports N1.

In these atmospheres there are also gases such as oxygen, which are emitted by living beings, and which can be an indicator of the existence of life.

But, notes Hinckley, even when signs of life are detected on a distant planet, it does not mean that we will surely meet aliens.

In an article published on the Spectator portal, he explains that evidence for the existence of life will likely be discovered by observing imbalances in the proportions of chemical elements (for example, ozone and carbon dioxide), which would not exist naturally, but are caused by some form of biological activity.

American NASA predicts that as many as hundreds of millions of worlds in our galaxy could support life and that we will detect life on planets outside our solar system.

Along with "James Webb", there are other space devices in the pipeline that will help in the search for life in space.

NASA has begun developing a space mission whose goal would be to find biosignatures on exoplanets by 2040.

Space telescopes can already analyze the light of a star as it passes through the atmosphere of a planet in its system, and thus establish its chemical composition.

Last August, astronomers announced that the James Webb telescope had detected carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a Saturn-sized planet 700 light-years from Earth.

Hinki states that special attention is paid to the planets in the so-called "Goldilocks zone", that is, at such a distance from its sun that life could exist there.

The orbits of such planets are neither too close nor too far from the sun, which makes ideal conditions for the existence of liquid water, which is considered a key ingredient for the existence of life.

It is believed that there could be billions of habitable planets in the universe, and hundreds of millions of them in our galaxy alone.

Professor Hinckley notes that the Milky Way galaxy is one of the best places to start looking for the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system.

The system is about 40 light-years away and consists of seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a dim, cool star not much larger than Jupiter.

Three planets in that system are in the habitable zone from their star and preparations have already begun to observe them in order to detect possible biosignatures.

To date, scientists have observed 5.332 exoplanets in 3.930 planetary systems.

According to Hinckley, it is assumed that there are about 200 billion galaxies in the universe, each potentially containing hundreds of billions of stars with their exoplanets.

And Dr. Emily Mitchell from the University of Cambridge believes that evidence of some "alien neighbors" will eventually be found, because life is, very likely, "very common" in space.

"We only have one biosignature – here on Earth. But my optimistic colleagues say that in ten or 20 years we will have several thousand biosignatures. Then we will study how different these biosignatures are from those on Earth," announces Mičelova.