SIGNS of life on planets beyond our own solar system may soon be in our sights. Experiments and calculations presented at an astrobiology meeting last week reveal how the coming generation of space telescopes will for the first time be capable of detecting “biosignatures” in the light from planets orbiting other stars.

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This can happen within our life time. Quite early infact, as one of the telescopes is set to launch in 2020.

That’s just 10.5 years from now, folks! The discovery of life on other planets will be shocking and many people will remain skeptical because the telescopes will not bring back actual pictures of aliens, but signs of oxygen and photosynthesis. Those in the religious community, especially, will go to fantastic lenghts to explain this because, as you know, religion simply must explain everything or it’s ALL FALSE (that’s what most religious people think like).

The liberal arts fields will launch into a romanticized notion of life and Hollywood, perhaps even Bollywood, will be inspired to rip more people off. But on the whole, after the shock, it will become a common and insignificant fact for most people, just as the theory of gravity is “nothing special” to most of them.

The only everlasting impact will be the controversy it creates in religious discourse… because religion has the most difficulty with change, especially with such radical revolutions of humanity’s outlook. In this case, humanity’s outlook will go from being a “world-perspective” to a “universe-perspective” and that will be the greatest and most significant change in human history since we gained consciousness.