The Milky Way may be home to some 3,000 extraterrestrial civilizations but the vast distances between our galactic cousins will make contact extremely rare, a new study concludes.
Dr. Ian O'Neill, space producer for Discovery News, steps in to discuss some of the ways scientists are working to detect signs of life on other worlds.
Data collected by NASA’s Kepler space telescope and other observatories scouting for planets beyond the solar system indicate Earth is one of some 40 billion potentially habitable worlds in the galaxy, with about one new life-friendly planet forming every year, astronomer Michael Garrett, head of the Dutch astronomy research foundation ASTRON, said at the International Astronomical Congress in Toronto.
Classic mainstream media backpeddling and damage control. To read more, click here.