English physicist Brian Cox believes that aliens exist somewhere in the known universe.
Brian Cox
Last week, US Congressman Andre Carson’s caused a stir when he claimed that UFOs were real and posed a “potential national security threat” that needed to be investigated.
Professor Cox backed Carson’s claims to an extent by stating that statistically there must be other sentient life in the "two trillion galaxies" that exist in the "observable universe", but he does not believe they are a threat.
Speaking on BBC’s Sunday Morning programme, he said: “There are two trillion galaxies in the observable universe, I’m sure there are others out there.
“It looks like we have good evidence life was present 3.8 billion years ago, and the first civilisation to appear on Earth was about now.
“So it took the best part of four billion years to go from the origin of life on Earth to a civilisation.
“That’s a third of the age of the universe, and that is a long time, so that may indicate that microbes may be common, but things like us maybe extremely rare.”
According to Monica Grady, professor of planetary and space sciences, we should not rule out the possibility of life existing considering we live in an infinite universe.
She said: “Our galaxy is so vast, with so many different types of stars with planets orbiting them, it is statistically possible for life to have arisen on another planet.
“We know that there is no civilisation, apart from ours, in the Solar System - so any life that has evolved to develop interstellar travel would have to journey across billions of miles.”
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