Tim Peake says there is ‘absolutely’ alien life in the universe – and predicts alien bacterial life could be found within five years
Major Tim Peake says there is ‘absolutely’ alien life in the universe and predicts alien bacterial life could be found within the next five years.
The British astronaut, 52, thinks the universe is ‘full of life’, but its vastness could cause problems if we ever make contact.
The father-of-two, from Chichester, East Sussex, was the last Briton to travel into space when he flew to the International Space Station (ISS) as a European Space Agency astronaut in 2015.
This week he spoke about his desire to be involved in a moon mission and also said he would like to be involved in a trip to Mars.
Speaking about the Travel diaries podcastPeake was asked if he imagined walking, talking creatures or microorganisms.
Tim Peake says there is ‘absolutely’ alien life in the universe and predicts alien bacterial life could be found within the next five years
British astronaut, 52, thinks the universe is ‘full of life’, but its vastness could cause problems if we ever make contact
‘I think both. “I think walking, talking, conscious and intelligent life will be much rarer than life in general,” he said.
‘I think the universe is teeming with life. If you have any doubts about the vastness and scale of the universe, just Google some of the James Webb Space Telescope images we’re now getting of galaxies.
‘I mean, hundreds of billions of stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy, which is very average.
“We think there could be as many as two trillion galaxies, each with a few hundred billion stars.”
He said the scale of the universe was “mind-boggling” and that we are learning that water is very common everywhere.
Peake said: ‘Water is present everywhere in our own solar system, let alone in the galaxy. We know that there are thousands and thousands of planets even in our local environment around stars that we observe now.
‘These planets tend to form the same pattern as our solar system: rocky planets close to the star, giant gas planets further away.
Major Peake said there are hundreds of billions of stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy, ‘which is very average’ and that he believes there are a trillion galaxies in the universe.
The father of two thinks ‘walking, talking, conscious and intelligent life will be much rarer than life in general’
‘And actually the most common form of stars, which are red dwarfs and not yellow dwarfs like our own Sun, burn for trillions of years and so there’s a lot more time for life to evolve if you’re on a planet orbiting a red star. ‘
He believes that “life is there if it is everywhere” and made a bold prediction that “we could find signs of a small, microbial bacterial life form within the next five, ten, fifteen years.”
“We are already seeing potential biosignatures in the atmospheres of planets in our local environment, which will be very exciting,” he said.
‘Intelligent life, yes – I think intelligent life exists.
“The problem is the vastness of the universe, just the scale we’re talking about, will we ever make contact?”
Peake announced in October that he would be leaving retirement to lead Britain’s first astronaut mission.
He will lead the four-strong crew on a £200 million project to the International Space Station, with the mission funded by Axiom.