Will hunt aliens for 25 years

Only a quarter of a century of humanity will find intelligent creatures at distant planets, according to the head of the program to hunt for extraterrestrial life.

Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute (ie Searching for Alien Intelligence) made such predictions at a high-tech conference chaired by the US Space and Aeronautics Agency (NASA) at Stanford University. (America).

He said that the key to success was to continue scanning areas of the sky to trace the electromagnetic signals transmitted from extraterrestrial civilizations.

Shostak estimates that astronomers must scavenge up to 1 million systems to achieve their goals.

'Of the 5 stars, there is likely to be a system that contains enough planet to support life ,' Space.com quoted Shostak.

The search for alien signals was launched in the 1960s, when astronomers played a pioneer Frank Drake using a 26-meter-wide antenna in West Virginia (USA) to scan two sun-like stars. .

The hunt for aliens is a three-horse race among those who believe in the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence; scientists seek simple life in celestial bodies in similar solar systems like Jupiter's moon Europa; and researchers focused on finding signs of the presence of microbial life.