Veteran scientist of the American space agency NASA, Dr. Centri Li, claims that aliens exist - they just haven't visited Earth.
Medianews.az, citing Publika.az, reports that Li has been working at the US space agency since 1968, when he first participated in the "Viking" mission to Mars. Since then, although he has spent over half a century developing probes for landing on distant planets, according to the "Daily Mail" newspaper, he claims that beings from another world have never traveled to Earth.
The scientist said at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference held in Phoenix: "Today, there is no evidence that any alien or alien spacecraft has ever crashed on Earth. If you believe otherwise, then you are acting under a delusion."
According to the expert, however, when it comes to distant planets, there is life somewhere there.
"We will find life in another place. The odds are very high," the scientist said.
According to the "Daily Mail" commentary, scientists generally believe that the best candidates for alien life are "Earth-like" worlds orbiting distant stars elsewhere in the galaxy. One such candidate is the Earth-sized TRAPPIST-1e planet, located only 40 light years away and within the safe "Goldilocks zone" of its star. Another promising candidate is K2-18b, 124 light years away in the Leo constellation, a gigantic world completely covered with oceans. Scientists call it the "Heyes world."
Even in our solar system, Saturn's moons Enceladus and Titan may have suitable conditions for the origin and development of life.
Li is currently the chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Solar System Exploration Mission Directorate. He has led the "Dawn" mission to two asteroids, the "Juno" mission to Jupiter, and the "GRAIL" mission to the Moon.
Supporting the new documentary film titled "Cosmonaut," Li stated that space telescopes like "Kepler" have examined a significant "portion" of the Milky Way's neighboring galaxy and discovered numerous planets orbiting other stars.
"If the section of the sky that Kepler observed represents the entire Milky Way, and we have no reason to believe it does not, then there are approximately one trillion planets just in our galaxy, and you can consider that some of them have possibilities for life to arise. Sooner or later, it will be possible to determine its location," the scientist said.