Two leading astronomers with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Research Center at the University of California (UC), Berkeley told Congress Wednesday alien life will be discovered within the next 20 years.

According to ABC News, Dan Werthimer, SETI director, and Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer, met with the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology to ask for continued funding for their search. Based on recent and past discoveries, Werthimer said with nearly 100 percent certainty microbial life exists somewhere on another planet.

CLICK HERE to read Werhimer's official statement to the committee.

"It would be bizarre if we are alone," Werthimer said at the hearing. "It would be a cramped mind that didn't wonder what other life is out there."

However, the SETI director said he did not believe the Earth should be trying to contact alien life forms, but rather take an approach of "just listening." Shostak joked that with no more funding, people on Earth will never find out if aliens like the Beatles, since NASA beamed their song, "Across the Universe" into space in 2008.

"If you extrapolate on the planets they discovered, there are a trillion planets in the galaxy. That's a lot of places for life," Shostak argued. "We know that the majority of stars have planets, [but what] fraction of stars has planets that are more like the earth? It might be one in five."

The SETI officials agreed that aliens have never been to Earth, arguing the government could not keep something like that a secret.

"I don't think that that would be something all the governments would have managed to keep a secret," Shostak said. "If they were really here I think everyone would know that."

Thus far, Discovery News reported, the search for microbial life away from Earth has focused on Mars and the work of NASA's Opportunity and Curiosity rovers. The SETI said they could find alien life by the year 2034.

"At least a half-dozen other worlds (besides Earth) that might have life are in our solar system," Shostak said. "The chances of finding it, I think, are good, and if that happens, it'll happen in the next 20 years, depending on the financing."