Alien civilisations wil be discovered within two decades, according to a top Russian astronomer. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images

A top Russian astronomer say he expects humans to encounter extraterrestrial civilisations within the next two decades. "The genesis of life is as inevitable as the formation of atoms ... Life exists on other planets and we will find it within 20 years," said Andrei Finkelstein, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Applied Astronomy Institute, according to the Interfax news agency.

Richard Hoover, an astrobiologist at the US space agency's Marshall space flight centre in Alabama, said filaments and other structures in rare meteorites appear to be microscopic fossils of extraterrestrial beings that resemble algae known as cyanobacteria. They are "the remains of extraterrestrial life forms that grew on the parent bodies of the meteorites when liquid water was present, long before the meteorites entered the Earth's atmosphere." they are "the remains of extraterrestrial life forms that grew on the parent bodies of the meteorites when liquid water was present, long before the meteorites entered the Earth's atmosphere.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jun/27/alien-encounters-twenty-years-russian-astronomer