We're taking a leaf out of The X-Files’ book, as one top scientist has given his own thoughts on whether little green dudes are out there in the cosmos. The search for alien life continues, and while some remain convinced they're locked up beneath Area 51, 2025 is supposedly a big year where the truth will be revealed.
Astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg says the only reason we haven't made contact with aliens is that we might not be able to, and now, it's over to Tim Coulson, a professor of Zoology at Oxford University, to pass his judgment on whether there's life up in the stars.
Writing in The European, Coulson says that while we should stop looking for cryptids like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster because they're 'scientifically impossible', our search for aliens should continue.
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Explaining his musings, Coulson wrote: "The universe is absolutely vast, and we have only explored a very tiny fragment of it. Unlike the forests where Bigfoot is supposed to live, or the mountainous home of the Yeti, we have only explored a miniscule corner of the places where aliens may be found."
He's one of the Earth's foremost authorities on biology and evolution, but similar to Bennell-Pegg, he remains unconvinced that we'll ever find aliens.
Noting that Guglielmo Marconi’s first radio signal went out 120 years ago, any intelligent life form immediately replying would have to be within 60 light-years of Earth. Even though there are about 3,000 stars that fit inside that parameter, it's not actually that many.
He points out how we've been searching for aliens for around a century, but as the universe is 13.8 billion years old, we've barely scratched the surface:
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"If civilisations only last for a few hundred or few thousand years, the chances of two intelligent species building civilisations at the same time that are cosmically close to one another is vanishingly small."
Another problem is a lack of advancements in our own science. Even the fastest probes would take thousands of years to reach the nearest star, so unless we can create wormholes to jump from one part of the universe to another, it's tough to explore much of the galaxy.
He concludes: "Because we have only explored a fraction of even our local neighbourhood, it is much too early to rule out the existence of aliens, be they simple bacteria-like organisms or little green beasts with long necks and oversized heads."
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Coulson muses that this lack of ability to realistically search for aliens in space is what makes us so obsessed with looking for cryptids closer to home.
The Zoology professor isn't alone in his belief that aliens exist, with Elon Musk referring to himself as a 3,000-year-old time-traveling alien. Joe Rogan also seemed open to the idea, while President Donald Trump told the controversial podcaster there's 'no reason not to' think there are aliens out there.
There's a lot still stopping us from getting a live-action reenactment of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but if you believe blind mystic Baba Vanga, aliens should be interrupting the Super Bowl in 2025.