Existence of Alien Life Could Be Detected By 2024, UFO Expert Claims

The existence of alien life could be detected in the next 12 years using the world's largest telescope, claims a UFO expert.

Nick Pope, former UK ministry of defense UFO project leader, has suggested that humans could possibly look for extraterrestrial life by 2024 with the help of a $2.1 billion (1.3 billion pounds) sensitive radio telescope, dubbed Square Kilometer Array (SKA), to be located in Australia and Southern Africa, reports Daily Express.

"I will be controversial and give you an exact year of when I believe first confirmation of contact will be made - and that is 2024, the year in which if everything goes according to plan the Square Kilometer Array will be fully operational," Pope told Daily Express.

"If there is a civilization within 100 light years this telescope could find it. We are now beginning to have the technology whether it's the SKA or maybe other telescopes that are being developed that will allow these possibilities. We are searching all the time for a shadow earth," he added.

The construction of the powerful telescope is expected to begin by 2016. The project is developed by SKA Organization, a not-for-profit company that was established in 2011.

The large telescope will be built using thousands of radio receptors that will be located in Australia and Southern Africa. Signals from antennas placed in each region will be combined to create the telescope with one square kilometer (0.3 square miles) size of collecting area, according to the official website.

The telescope is expected to offer sensitivity 50 times greater and 100 times high resolution images compared to any other radio telescope on Earth. It will have a survey speed that will be 10,000 times faster than other telescopes.

Scientists claim that the telescope will help in understanding how galaxies are formed and how they evolved, the nature of gravity and the search for extraterrestrial life beyond Earth.