Discovering alien life would transform Earth, and not in a Martians-massacring-the-entire-US-Congress kind of way.

It would prompt — rather, it should prompt — another paradigm shift in how we see ourselves and our place in the universe. It will be similar to what happened when we worked out we weren’t at the centre of the solar system — another Copernican Revolution.

We earthy types are not so special after all.

It will be a shock, this next shift, if we find we are not alone (although the chances are the first extraterrestrial life we find will be bacteria, which aren’t the greatest conversationalists).

That shift is something we should probably prepare for.

NASA put men on the moon, among other astounding scientific achievements, and now they reckon we’ll find life Out There within a decade.

Just think, aliens and Clive Palmer co-existing in the same galaxy. The mind boggles.

NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan says we’re on the verge of discovering ET.

“I think we’re going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we’re going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years,” she said, swiftly adding that she wasn’t talking about little green men.

“We know where to look, we know how to look, and in most cases we have the technology,” she said.

Recent planetary probes have found water, a fairly important precursor to life, is more common throughout the Milky Way than previously thought.

Picture an array of swamps, scattered among the stars, any one of which might be breeding primordial beings.

Among the likely suspects are Mars, and Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Mars gets people’s hopes up not just because it’s where Martians always come from (ahem) but because there’s evidence of methane in the atmosphere which could be produced by microbes.

But there could be many more possibilities, far more habitable worlds out there.

The discovery would be extraordinary.

Scientifically it would open up an amazing new avenue of knowledge. That in turn could cause political strife if the money is not there to do it properly.

For many religions the evolution of life on another planet poses all sorts of cognitive dissonance — that’s a sort of mental stress when evidence appears that contradicts your current beliefs, but your brain refuses to bend to a new truth.

The conspiracy theorists would come out en masse, surely. It’s guaranteed some people would think it a hoax, in the same way they refuse to believe in the moon landing. Others would find themselves incapable of thinking behind sci-fi drama, they’d think the end was nigh.

With any luck, the now-gone but still-legendary astronomer and science populariser (and author of Contact) Carl Sagan would suddenly become a smash hit with younger generations.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott would likely question the microbes’ lifestyle choice in setting up shop in such an inhospitable spot. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten would come up with some sort of Mars Attacks-related zinger, and the Greens would call for the immediate preservation of the area. Or boycott them, for some reason.

Or it could all just cause a stir in the NerdiVerse, the bigger ramifications only becoming apparent over time.

It could well turn out that it’s a huge anticlimax, finding alien life. Because we’ve been exposed to so many stories about benevolent beings evolving in order to fly in bicycle baskets or malevolent beings existing only to destroy Sigourney Weaver that some single-cell organism floating about in Martian soup barely makes it into the social pages.

The way Earth seems to be going, people’s interest will only be peaked once some paleo-hugging fraudster claims extraterrestrial bacteria in a green smoothie can cure ennui.

I have a nasty feeling that one of the biggest discoveries of the century, a discovery that should render us awestruck and give us some perspective on our fleeting lives, will largely pass unnoticed unless the scientists behind it really know how to make an Instagram pic go viral.