Astronomer is willing to bet Tim Horton's coffee on alien encounter by 2025

[This image of Mars was taken on Nov. 13, 2005 using a webcam attached to a schmidt-cassegrain telescope. Jamie Cooper/SSPL/Getty Images]

Mark your calendars because the human race is due for a massive discovery that’ll completely change the way we view ourselves in the universe.

At least that’s according to Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the California-based Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, who was one of the speakers Monday at the Telus World of Science in Edmonton.

Shostak says it won’t be long until humans discover life in outer space and he’s willing to put his money where his mouth is.

“I’ll bet everybody a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee that we find ET by 2025,” he told the Edmonton Journal. “I may have to buy a lot of coffee, but nonetheless that’s simply based on the speed of the search as gauged by the rapid improvement in computer technology.”

He figures it’s only a matter of time until humans answer the age old question of if we’re alone in the universe, but don’t expect whatever we find to look exactly like the little green men from the movies.

Instead, we should be prepared for a discovery that will likely look very different from anything resembling life as we know it.

“Synthetic intelligence, unlike human intelligence, can improve itself very quickly,” he said. “So probably the dominant intelligence in the cosmos is not biology at all.”

And perhaps we may find signs of alien life even sooner than 2025.

The recently launched ExoMars mission is set to arrive at the Red Planet after seven months travelling in space, with the main goal of finding out if life on Mars has ever, or does currently, exist.

The mission will involve both a small vehicle touching down on Mar’s surface and another larger craft called the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) being placed in the planet’s orbit.

While the smaller craft’s main purpose is to test and prepare landing technology for scientific hardware, the TGO’s job will be specifically searching for the presence of certain gases in Mar’s atmosphere.

Significant traces of methane and other chemical compounds produced by biological matter could indicate the potential for life, however small, on Mars.