Alien life could be out there as organisms have been discovered that survive in hydrogen.

Scientists say the gas creates an atmosphere that traps heat and dramatically increases the number of potentially habitable planets.

And that includes rocky “super Earths” previously dismissed as being too far from their suns to be warm enough to sustain lifeforms.

Professor Sara Seager, who has made it her mission to find extraterrestrial life, says we are close to a breakthrough.

The award-winning astrophysicist said: “Life could thrive in a much broader variety of environments than is usually considered.

“Rocky exoplanets more massive than Earth can retain a significant amount of hydrogen in their atmosphere.

“Hydrogen atmospheres are likely to be more extended than Earth-like ones – making them easier to detect.

“But it is still unclear if oxygen is an absolute requirement. We should expand the types of planets we consider worth searching.”

The finding comes as lab experiments on substances including yeast found they survived and grew after being exposed to 100% hydrogen.

The groundbreaking findings, published in Nature Astronomy, proves worlds ten times more distant from a star compared to the Earth are capable of harbouring life.

And over eons, it’s possible the microbes would evolve into more complex multi-cellular life.

The work also demonstrates laboratory experiments to better identify which kinds of alien environments can host some form of possibly detectable life.

Prof Seager says it is “inevitable” there is life beyond Earth and believes we will find signs of it in the next 15 years.

She added: “We stand on a great threshold in the human history of space exploration.”

In 2018 a NASA planet-hunting telescope designed to detect worlds beyond our solar system discovered a distant ‘super Earth.’

And the space agency says its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) could find thousands more over the next few years.

It has made an early discovery of a super Earth and a hot-Earth planet in solar systems at least 60 and 49 light-years away respectively.

That was the first major discovery since it was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida in April 2018.

It is thought the new “super-Earth”, named Pi Menase c, is 60 light years away and orbiting its sun every 6.3 days.

The plan could have a solid surface or be a water world, according to TESS scientist Martin Spill.