Famed SETI astronomer retiring, says discovery of alien life ‘very close’

Famed SETI astronomer retiring, says discovery of alien life ‘very close’: "“Everybody who is working in the field of exoplanet detection can almost taste it,” said Ms. Tarter, who was the inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in the sci-fi film Contact. “We’re very close. We’re going to have a rocky planet the size of the Earth, at a distance from a star that’s like the sun, where liquid water is plausible on the surface. When we can point up to the star and say: ‘Right there is another Earth,’ I think that inevitably the next question is going to be, does anybody live there, and can we get there? And I think that will make this even more tangible for people.”"