8 Scientific Breakthroughs That Will Change The World

3. Discovery Of Extraterrestrial Life

In the search of extraterrestrials, the study of exoplanets is thought by many to drastically improve our chances of finding the little green men. There has been a veritable explosion in the discovery of exoplanets of the past couple of decades. With the first confirmed detection occurring in 1992, the next decade or so would see the odd discovery here and there. In 2014, the rate of discovery would leap from less that 150 to almost 900, and as of February 2015, 2074 exoplanets have been detected. In the absence of a friendly spaceship dropping out of the sky to greet us, all of this new planets give us the best chance yet of finding alien life. The chances are that if we were to discover alien life, it would be in microbial form. Although this is less exciting that intergalactic intelligent beings, it would revolutionise what we know about life in the universe. Even the tiniest detection would lead us down a path of discovery, answering questions such as: whether life always arises in the right conditions, or is it a rare accident? Is it always the same? Does it always lead to intelligence? Does it always need water? And that's just microbial sludge. The implications of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) would be earth shattering, dramatically altering our perceptions of everything from religion to politics to space travel.