Forget the grainy footage of 'flying saucers' or the campy sci-fi tropes of little green men from Mars; the search for extraterrestrial life has officially moved from the fringes of the paranormal into the prestigious halls of mainstream science.
For decades, admitting to a belief in aliens was enough to have an academic's credibility questioned, but a profound shift in the scientific zeitgeist is underway. Today, it is no longer the conspiracy theorists making the loudest noise—it is the astrophysicists, and they are armed with data.
