Are We Really Alone?

Scientists are analyzing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life and technologies as never before-and expecting big breakthroughs

- ELLIE COOK

A BREAKTHROUGH IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH into extraterrestrial life could be on the horizon, leading scientists have said, as both political and scientific minds delve into the murky world of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) with new determination.

UFOs refer to aerial phenomena that cannot be immediately identified or explained, while the term UAPS is broader.

"Within our lifetime-even very soon-I think we are going to discover if there is life on other planets," Ravi Kopparapu, planetary scientist with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, told Newsweek. We are approaching a "golden moment" to which more and more scientific minds are turning their attention, he said. "I would say within our lifetime we would be able to find life on other planets, there's no question."

It is "quite possible" that evidence counting as a breakthrough on unknown phenomena could be discovered within even a year or two, said theoretical astrophysicist Avi Loeb, professor at Harvard University, who is leading its pioneering Galileo Project looking into extraterrestrial technologies.

"The Galileo Project is the first scientific project that is analyzing UAPs in a systematic fashion over a long period of time, using instruments that are fully calibrated and under control," he told Newsweek. "Whenever you take a path that was not taken, there is a good chance you will find low-hanging fruit. And that is the way I look at it."