Congressional lawmakers have been told intelligent life from other worlds could be detected within 20 years -- but that potential discovery could be jeopardized by government budget cuts.

Astronomers from the California-based SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute explained to the House Science and Technology Committee this week that there are several approaches currently being used by the scientific community to look for signs of alien intelligence.

"At least a half-dozen other worlds besides Earth that might have life are in our solar system. 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," astrobiologist Seth Shostak said before the committee, according to The Space Reporter.

Besides detecting life from somewhere in Earth's planetary neighborhood, scientists could also possibly find otherworldly intelligence by scanning planets outside our own solar system for traces of methane or oxygen, two gases often accompanied by other indicators of life, Shostak said.

Then, since it's generally considered a foregone conclusion intelligent life on other planets would likely have means to send radio and other types of waves into space, like Earthlings do, the existence of other forms of life could also be revealed by intercepting signals emitted from other planets, whether or not they are intentionally or accidentally produced.

Dan Werthimer, another SETI astronomer, told the panel some of Earth's oldest television shows, such as "I Love Lucy" and "The Ed Sullivan Show," have already interacted with an estimated 10,000 stars and their accompanying worlds.

"The nearby stars have seen 'The Simpsons.' If we're broadcasting, maybe other civilizations are sending signals in our direction -- either leaking signals the way that we unintentionally send off signals or maybe a deliberate signal," Werthimer said.

He noted that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Kepler space telescope mission has shown that the Milky Way Galaxy alone has at least a trillion planets.

"Billions of these planets are Earth-sized and in the 'habitable' or so called 'Goldilocks' zone -- not too distant from their host star, too cold, and not too close to their star, too hot. And there are billions of other galaxies outside our Milky Way galaxy -- plenty of places where life could emerge and evolve," he added.

According to a news release from the University of California, Berkeley, which sports its own SETI program, scientists plan a "broader, more coordinated effort, dubbed the Panchromatic SETI Project, to observe the planets around all 30 stars within 13 light years of Earth in the northern hemisphere. To do this, the UC Berkeley collaborators will harness six different ground-based telescopes, including Arecibo, Green Bank and the Keck telescopes in Hawaii, to look for optical, infrared and radio signals simultaneously and for more extended periods of time."

And yet, Werthimer noted in his committee remarks, while "SETI programs use the world's largest radio and optical telescopes to search for evidence of advanced civilizations and their technology on distant extrasolar planets," two of the best -- the Arecibo in Puerto Rico and Green Bank telescope in Virginia -- are in danger of losing federal funding.

"It's unfortunate that the two largest radio telescopes in the world and that are best for SETI are in danger of closing their doors," he said.