The revelation that we might be seriously close to an answer is, therefore, momentous and surprising; even more surprising is that the revelation occurred on Jools Holland's New Year's Eve 2023 'Musical Hootenanny', in between performances by Rod Stewart, the Sugababes, Joss Stone, and the Mary Wallopers.
As is his wont, whenever the music subsided Jools Holland skittered boyishly between his BBC TV guests, asking them for comments on the year just gone, and the year to come. One of these guests was Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock, honorary research assistant at University College London's world-famous Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Sitting next to Dr Aderin-Pocock, Holland asked the noted astronomer for her expectations of 2024, and she replied, candidly and baldly: 'I think we're going to discover alien life.' Slightly startled, Holland asked for some clarity - e.g. are we going to meet them on planet earth - to which she further said: 'Alien life is definitely out there'. Note: not here, there.
If this was just a one off, we might dismiss it. Perhaps the BBC was unusually generous with the English fizz in the green room. But Aderin-Pocock is not the only person ending 2023 with startling predictions of alien life discovery. In a YouTube video broadcast a few days ago, popular UK astrophysicist Becky Smethurst added some detail to all this, by saying: 'I think we are going to get a paper that has strong evidence for a biosignature on an exoplanet very, very soon. Let's just say it's on my bingo card for 2024'.
Likewise, in a CNBC interview broadcast the first week of 2024, UK astronaut Tim Peake was asked to speculate on extra-terrestrial life, and he said 'Potentially, the James Webb telescope may have already found [alien life]... it's just that they don't want to release or confirm those results until they can be entirely sure, but we found a planet that seems to be giving off strong signals of biological life.'
What does it all mean? It is possible the three space-heads are referring to different discoveries, but the fact that they are all British, and all using similar language, suggests they are referring to the same thing: namely a scientific paper, probably British in origin, perhaps still being peer-reviewed, which will provide firm evidence of alien life on an exoplanet (a planet outside our solar system), using biosignatures, which generally means gases and chemicals in the atmosphere which are highly likely to emanate from organic creatures. These biosignatures might be combinations of methane and oxygen, or methane and CO2, and so on.
Not surprisingly, this sequence of statements has set the space-rabbit of speculation running hard. Dedicated UFO-bods on Twitter/X are, for instance, claiming that this is merely stage one of 'disclosure' - the act of carefully educating humanity about alien life, without destabilising the world.
The supposed disclosure plan goes like this: first, the powers-that-be will casually tell us that a planet a squillion miles away probably harbours a few bugs in the clouds - i.e. something profound, but non-threatening. Once we've grown used to that, we will be told we've encountered a 'technosignature', indicating intelligent non-earth life, maybe broadcasting radio waves or sending out probes (which is worrying but, hey, we coped with the microbes).
Finally we will be informed that non-human intelligence walks among us, and has been doing so for a while - which is deeply threatening, but seeing as we got used to the space bugs then the space radio signals, what does it matter if we have space beings on Earth?
That all sounds quite mad - but then, lots of UFO-ish revelations these past few years have seemed quite mad. And, anyway, we don't have to go too deep down this rabbit hole to find these tantalising British space-hints highly stimulating. Will the paper identifying these biosignatures be widely accepted? Or will it be challenged by other scientists, and end up rather lost in ambiguity and dispute?
Perhaps it won't be taken all that seriously (this happened to recent discoveries of phosphine gas on Venus). Alternatively, the anticipated paper will prove definitive, and will be accepted into the scientific consensus. Thereafter, we will all nod and understand that yes, there are other life forms out there, beyond our terrestrial home. Should that happen, Jools Holland's 2023 Musical Hootenanny will likely go down in history - and not just because it showed that Rod Stewart can still belt out a banging tune.
Do they believe that George Carlin is being reincarnated?