2031

Human civilization may come into contact with the extraterrestrial civilizations within the next two decades, according to a top Russian astronomer.

Russian astronomers expect to find out and meet aliens by the year 2031, Andrei Finkelstein, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Applied Astronomy Institute, said on Monday, while speaking at an international forum dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life.

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Enlarge(Photo: REUTERS/NASA)An artist's impression of a planet orbiting the yellow, Sun-like star HD 209458, 150 light-years from Earth. About10 percent of the known planets circling suns in the galaxy resemble Earth, which increases the possibility that alien life exists elsewhere.Related ArticlesHighlights of Ford Europe vehicle sales in MayRelated Topics

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However, the renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who has always said that alien life certainly existed, has warned over contact with them as it might be devastating for humanity."If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he told The Sunday Times in April last year.He also advocated in an interview with BBC in May 2010 that, “rather than try to establish contact, man should try to avoid contact with alien life forms.”Finkelstein asserted that Russian Academy of Sciences' Applied Astronomy Institute has “mainly been waiting for messages from space and not the other way."Reports of UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) sightings across the world in the last 60 years have added to the speculations about alien life. The infamous Roswell UFO sighting in New Mexico in July 1947, which the government allegedly covered up, triggered intense curiosity worldwide about aliens.More recently, UFOs were reportedly 'spotted' in London on June 24, fueling assumptions about aliens, an issue which refuses to die down.