Aliens could contact the Earth today as scientists rule it's the 'most likely date'

If we're ever going to have confirmation of Alien-life, today could be the day, scientists have said.

It all began when Japanese astronomers Masaki Morimoto and Hisashi Hirabayashi used a Stanford University telescope 40 years ago to put out a radio signal towards a star called Altair, which was 16.7 light years away.

'While drunk', the duo transmitted a message of 13 drawings of what evolution on earth looks like, basically in the hope that any curious aliens - who were orbiting Altair at the time - would see the drawings and issue a response.

The date was August 15 in 1983, and Morimoto and Hirabayashi used decoded signals in an email, which included the 13 drawings - some of which included illustrations of the evolution on Earth - from unicellular organisms to fish, a lizard, an ape and a family of humans.

While a response was never received, now, 40 years on, a team of astronomers at the University of Hyogo have placed a radio telescope in the city of Sakutaken and are reportedly hopeful they will receive that highly anticipated response.

According to Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, it is unclear how realistic the team's expectations are, though they've calculated that today (August 22) is the most likely date for a response.

The University of Hyogo team, led by Shinya Narusawa, are now using an antenna over 200 feet (64 metres) in diameter called Usuda Deep Space Center in Saku.

"A large number of exoplanets have been detected since the 1990s," Narusawa told The Asahi Shimbun. "Altair may have a planet whose environment can sustain life."

Shinya Narusawa

Back in 2008, however, Hirabayashi was certain that aliens exist, with him telling Gizmodo at the time: "I believe in aliens, but they are very difficult to find."

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

This comes after last month's news that lawmakers in US Congress heard first-hand accounts of unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings from former members of the military in a hearing to explore what the US Government knows about the existence of UFOs.

Retired Major David Grusch told Congress that the US government is concealing a long-standing programme that retrieves and reverse-engineers UFOs and that the US likely has been aware of 'non-human' activity since the 1930s.

The Pentagon has denied Mr Grusch’s claims of a cover-up.

Buddy Mays/Getty

Professor Brian Cox - a professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester - tweeted: “I keep being asked what I make of the UFO thing in Congress yesterday, so here it is.

“I watched a few clips and saw some people who seemed to believe stuff saying extraordinary things without presenting extraordinary evidence.

“It would take a bit of the pressure off our civilisation if we weren’t the only means within the Milky Way by which the Universe understands itself.

“Sadly, as of today, I still feel that pressure, so can we perhaps focus on not messing our world up rather than hoping that, to paraphrase Sagan, someone will float down to save us from ourselves.”