Vatican looks to heavens for signs of alien life

VATICAN CITY – E.T. phone Rome. Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.

"The questions of life's origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration," said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.

Galactic Suite

The proposed Space hotel in orbit.

A Spanish-based company is planning to set a three-bedroom hotel in space by 2012. Space tourists wanting to check-in in the hotel will be charged $4 million for a three-day stay. But before they could avail of the service, the guests will need to undergo eight weeks of intensive training. Then they will be flown by a private shuttle into orbit. Hotel guests would see the sun rise 15 times a day and use Velcro suits to crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman.