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This astronaut believes in alien life

Former Canadian astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield believes we are not alone in the universe.

Hadfield, who has travelled to space several times, worked on the International Space Station and is one of those rare human beings who’s had the chance to actually walk in space.

He says it would be conceited to believe we are the only ones out there.

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“We always guessed that we’re not alone in the universe. We’d like to think that we’re the centre of the universe, we’d like to think that we’re the only life in the universe but with every big telescope we build, the more we can look. The more we can realise how insignificant we are,” Hadfield said in Sydney.

The former astronaut is Down Under to give a series of talks called A Spaceman’s View Of The Earth.

But what truly put Hadfield’s name on the map was his version of David Bowie’s classic track Space Oddity, recorded from the International Space Station while in orbit and its video garnered almost 90 million views on YouTube.

Hadfield believes the astronomical advancements we’ve made in recent years have brought us closer to finding life elsewhere.

“Just in the last decade we have found thousands of planets around other stars where we can actually start to see the planets or at least the affects of them,” he said.

There are even specific planets that Hadfield says potentially have the right conditions for life.

“We’ve seen over a thousand and out of those thousand planets at least five are earth-like. We don’t know if they have life or not but they are similar to earth – the same sort of distance from the sun, the same sort of heat.

“… We know there are not just billions, not just trillions but septillions of planets out there,” he said.

He does, however, concede that the distances from earth to these other planets with potential for life are huge but it’s only a matter of time before we discover life out in the great beyond.

“The odds are overwhelming that we’re not alone but we haven’t found any evidence yet. And that’s part of the reason we’re exploring the universe to find out are we alone or not,” he said.

-AAP

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