Aliens are more likely to be purple than green.
Purple aliens could be roaming in space
Scientists have long thought that extraterrestrials were green like the colour of the pigment chlorophyll that enables oxygen to sustain life on Earth but new research suggests that they could in fact be purple like the earliest bacteria on our planet.
Experts are now planning to make sure telescopes are capable of searching for purple pigments to prevent any evidence of alien life in space from being overlooked.
Lisa Kaltenegger, co-author of the study at Cornell University in New York, told the Scientific American news website: "(The move is designed) to create a database for signs of life to make sure our telescopes don't miss life it happens not to look exactly like what we encounter around us every day.
"Purple bacteria can survive and thrive under such a variety of conditions that it is easy to imagine that on many different worlds. Purple may just be the new green."