Aliens will be found by 2075, top scientist insists

Britain’s top space scientist says humanity will find alien life within five decades. Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock, a professor at University College London’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, told the Daily Mail she is absolutely convinced there is life beyond Earth and that a positive detection could come by 2075.

Her comments come ahead of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, Britain's oldest public science talks, where the focus is Big Questions in space science. Aderin-Pocock cited the "numbers game" of the Drake equation and the sheer scale of the universe to argue that life must exist elsewhere. "In the whole of the universe there are approximately 200 billion galaxies," she said. "And so although certain conditions were in place for life to start here on Earth, and this is the only example we have of life, I’m absolutely convinced that there’s life out there, because with so many stars, so many planets, why would it just occur here?" They are Britain's most prestigious public science lectures, and this year's focus is on the big questions space science still has to answer.

She pointed to exoplanet K2-18b, 124 light-years from Earth, where molecules detected in the atmosphere could persist only if there is some form of life. NASA and other teams have described K2-18b as a likely Hycean world, with hydrogen-rich atmospheres and potential oceans that could harbor living organisms. The James Webb Space Telescope, which has been scanning distant worlds for signs of life, is central to these efforts. K2-18b sits in a zone where conditions might support liquid water, a key ingredient for life as we know it.

The search for life beyond the solar system has accelerated in recent years. In September, NASA announced findings from Mars that scientists described as among the clearest signs yet of potential ancient life—in the form of mineral-rich markings in mudstones that could reflect chemical processes associated with microbes. While the interpretation remains debated, researchers say the discovery underscores the importance of bringing samples back to Earth for thorough analysis. "We’re building facilities to do just that so we can analyse them. Because it’s hard to take all our scientific equipment to Mars, for example, but if we can bring samples from Mars to Earth and analyse them here on Earth, we can get a lot more understanding," said Aderin-Pocock. "Of course, the ultimate solution is to send me. Some people retire and potter around their garden, and my retirement plan is to potter around Mars."

Asked about the kind of life, she said, "Grey sludge is probably the most likely thing we’re going to find," but added there is a chance of more sophisticated life that could evolve and communicate—and their technology might be far superior to ours.

If life is found, scientists would have to ensure it is completely isolated to prevent contamination. "If there is any form of life, we need to make sure it is totally isolated," she said. "It cannot come into contact with any sort of human presence." We must be cautious about even microbial life.

Beyond detection, Aderin-Pocock said she sees humanity as space-faring. "I see us as a space‑faring people – I see that as the way forward. And I find that exciting that we won’t just be Earth‑bound. We will expand outwards. It’s the stuff of science fiction, literally, but science fiction does become science fact. One of the things I love about space is when you look at planet Earth from space, you don’t see boundaries, you don’t see country borders. You just see our planet. And that’s what I would like space to be. I think space might be a way that we unite."

The 2025 Christmas Lectures, Is there life beyond Earth?, with Dame Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, will be broadcast on BBC Four and iPlayer on 28, 29 and 30 December at 7 p.m.

Key discoveries in humanity’s search for alien life have shaped the conversation over the decades. Pulsars were first identified in 1967 by Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a discovery that prompted years of study into strange cosmic signals. The infamous Wow! signal, detected in 1977, remains the strongest single radio transmission ever recorded but has not been replicated. In 1996, a controversial claim linked Martian meteorite ALH 84001 to fossilized microbes, though subsequent work questioned the finding. More recently, Tabby’s Star drew attention in 2015–2017 for irregular dimming that spurred speculation about alien megastructures, a possibility that recent work has largely dismissed. In 2017, the TRAPPIST-1 system revealed seven Earth-sized planets, several with conditions thought to be compatible with liquid water and potential life.