A former NASA chief scientist believes aliens will have a close encounter with humans within the next few years.
Speaking on BBC's HARDtalk, Jim Green explained that humans are on the edge of a "really astounding discovery" after expressing his belief that life beyond Earth exists.
After working at the US space agency for 40 years, Jim reveals that he expects aliens to be discovered within his lifetime.
Jim said that we're making enormous progress and stated we now know that are more planets within our galaxy than there are stars.
He said: "Many of them are in places much like the Earth where we can receive the light from the Sun and we can have water.
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“And not only in liquid form - frozen form and vapour form. These are important conditions we believe for life.
"We are finding planets that have conditions where life may arise.”
With NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope, boffins will be able to analyse atmospheres of remote planets from never-before-seen images that the telescope will produce.
Jim continued: “With our next big telescope we are going to start teasing out what some of these planets look like from their atmospheres.
“We are going to be comparing these atmospheres to the ones we know. Are they more Venus-like, are they more Mars-like, are they more Earth-like?"
He explained how this is a huge step forward and we're going to see 'really astounding discoveries in the next handful of years'
The former NASA chief scientist predicted that the US space agency is on its way to answering its two mission objectives: “Are we alone and how did we get here?’’
Recently, locals in Waycross, Georgia, in the US, were left baffled when they witnessed a 'space jellyfish' flying over the skies at the start of the month.
People saw a bright and fast moving object in the sky which was followed by a glowing oblong aura.
Although many were left puzzled by what the ' UFO ' could have been, it was revealed to be a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which was launched at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.
Professor Chris Combs, from the University of Texas at San Antonio explained the odd object moving in the sky and why it resembled a jellyfish and it's all to do with the engine's nozzle.
He said: "Under-expanded means nozzle exit pressure is greater than surroundings, so gas needs to expand more (drop pressure) to match.
“Over-expanded means nozzle exit P is less than surroundings—expanded too much. In under-expanded exhaust, you get expansion fans at the nozzle exit to decrease pressure and match background: jellyfish, at high altitude
"In over-expanded exhaust, you get shock waves to increase pressure back up to background: shock diamonds, lower altitude."
