Lord Rees, the president of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal,said the chance of discovering alien life is greater than ever.  He believes the newer space telescopes will make it easier to dicover earth like planets orbiting distant stars.  He said, “Technology has advanced so that for the very first time we can actually have the realistic hope of detecting planets no bigger than the earth orbiting other stars.” Rees made his comments at a gathering of scientists in London for a conference on the possibilities of discovering extra-terrestrial life.

Also attending is physicist Professor Paul Davies of Arizona State University.  He thinks that instead of scanning the heavens we should search inhospitable areas of earth such as deserts for “weird” microbes that might belong to a “shadow biosphere”. He told the London Dail Mail, ‘We need to give up the notion that ET is sending us some sort of customised message and take a new approach.”

But the majority of the scientific community believe the search in outer space remains our best bet for finding aliens. Professor Colin Pillinger  remains sceptical of focusing our search on Earth.  He said, “I prefer to deal in scientific fact – this is wildly science fiction. You’d be off your trolley to go searching for arsenic-based life.”

Weird microbes in the desert?  Maybe this explains some of the characters I’ve seen wandering around Area 51.