When ET was first released back in 1982, I built myself a cardboard spaceship and told my mum I would be back soon, but that I had to go find him. I think I mainly wanted to be Drew Barrymore but I was also utterly convinced that ET was real and that he could “phone home”.

All the adults told me there were no such things as aliens and so I learned to believe them. In the last few years science has helped me come full circle and this is my two fingers to all those party poopers who I am now sure were wrong!

Prof Brian Green, one of the best lecturers I have ever seen, said that everything we know about space and all the maths that goes with it makes it almost impossible for us to be the only life in the universe.

With our increasing ability to see further into space we are being inundated with images of new planets, suns and solar systems similar to our own.

NASA’s Kepler mission is on the hunt for habitable planets. Using a rather impressive telescope they are watching for little dots passing in front of stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. One of those little dots may be just like Earth, teeming with life. Since the mission began in 2009 it has unearthed literally thousands of planets (as of last formal count in January 2013 it was 2,740!). Of these, a handful are in the so-called “habitable zone”. In what could also be called the Goldilocks Zone, the Habitable Zone is not too hot and not too cold, being just the right distance from a sister sun.

Last week we discovered the best candidate for a habitable planet yet! Kepler 186f (NASA isn’t big on inspiring names) is around 10 per cent bigger than Earth and a similar distance from a large star at the centre of its solar system. This is the first time we have discovered a planet with such similar stats as Earth, which is making scientists very excited.

However, we don’t know anything about the atmosphere of our potential cousin so there is lots of work to be done.

If the prospect of life on another planet doesn’t excite you so much then how about a planet made of diamond? 55 Cancri e (why they didn’t call it “Bling” is a mystery!), which was discovered in 2004, was originally thought to be solid diamond. More research has shown that it may just be a layer of diamond under the surface. Still, that is one massive engagement ring!

Many scientists believe that we have discovered all the ingredients that make up the entire universe.

So the universe is essentially a recipe book where each planet’s recipe is a selection of ingredients from a single list.

So it’s just a matter of finding a planet somewhere out there whose recipe is like that for Earth, a bicycle and a kid called Elliot and we’ll all be phoning home.