Alien attempts to contact the human race become garbled in space.
Alien messages are getting lost in translation on the way to Earth
Scientists are convinced that extraterrestrials have the ability to send "quantum messages" that are made up of particles of light.
However, the vast distances the messages have to travel through space means the communications become gibberish by the time they reach Earth.
Professor Arjun Berera, from the University of Edinburgh, explained: "Intelligent extraterrestrials, if they're out there, may have adopted quantum communication.
"In principle, it should be possible to detect a quantum signal coming from an astrophysical body or even an intelligent signal from an extraterrestrial civilisation."
Berera explained that the quantum messages are very fragile and are destroyed by external interaction.
He added: "Quantum states are very delicate and if there's any kind of external interaction, you destroy that state."