Humans will have to wait until at least 2383 to make contact outside our solar system according to a study

IN less than 20 years' time, humans will walk on Mars, and before the end of the century they will also have set foot on at least one satellite of Jupiter or Saturn, according to forecasts in a preprint paper from researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a NASA space research center. But perhaps the most tantalizing projection is that in a little over 350 years, around 2383, humans may come into contact with a species of intelligent life from outside our solar system.

The study, which was revealed earlier this year, is quite serious.

It was conducted by Jonathan H. Jiang, a scientist and group leader in the Earth Sciences Section of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and his team.

Their equations suggest that humans could land on Mars in 2038 and do the same on Saturn as early as 2086, if we have the means. Humans could even one day, by 2254, succeed in going beyond our solar system, to venture into Proxima Centauri, the nearest planetary system.

As for meeting another form of "intelligent" life one day, the researchers think that it could be feasible, projecting that it could be possible by the year 2383.

It should be noted that the closest point considered likely to host complex life would still be located some 14,000 light years from the solar system!

As pollution and climatic upheavals threaten the Earth, envisioning an escape to another planet is no longer simply looking like the stuff of science fiction.