Stephen Hawking: aliens 'almost certain to exist,' could invade Earth

Sunday, April 25, 2010 

Stephen Hawking in 2007, experiencing zero-gravity.
Image: David Shapinsky.

This plaque appeared on Pioneer spacecraft, in the hope of making extraterrestrial contact.
Image: NASA Pioneer.

After three years working on a new television series for the Discovery Channel, Stephen Hawking concludes that aliens are "almost certain to exist" and could even be dangerous.

Hawking says that it is rational to assume that intelligent life exists somewhere in the universe, and mathematically unlikely that life is unique to the Earth, given the existence of a hundred billion galaxies, each of them containing hundreds of millions of stars.

Hawking imagines nomadic aliens, having exhausted their home's resources, could attempt to take control of other planets, invading with "massive ships", and draws a comparison with Christopher Columbus discovering America, resulting in similar devastating consequences. With this in mind he advises "intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet." However, he believes that the most likely forms of life would be microbes or simple animals on planets, in the centre of stars or drifting through space.

His declaration comes in the month of the 20th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's launch into space.

The Drake equation, created in the 1960s, estimates the probability of extraterrestrial civilizations; feeding in modern research gives a high likelihood. The contradiction between this and actual discovery is known as the Fermi paradox.

Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, supports efforts to search for transmissions that might be artificial in origin. "Even if we couldn't make much sense of it, we'd have learnt that 'intelligence' wasn't unique to the hardware inside human skulls, and had emerged elsewhere," he said.

Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking will begin on May 9 on the Discovery Channel.

Stephen Hawking, 68, retired as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in 2009. Known for his research into cosmology, quantum gravity and black holes, he became a household name following the publication of his 1988 book A Brief History of Time, which remained on the Sunday Times bestseller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

Sources

• "Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking" — The Sunday Times, April 25, 2010
• "Stephen Hawking: alien life is out there, scientist warns" — The Daily Telegraph, April 25, 2010
• "Contact with aliens could get us killed, says Stephen Hawking in Discovery's 'Into the Universe'" — New York Daily News, April 25, 2010
• "Stephen Hawking: Earth could be at risk of an invasion by aliens living in 'massive ships'" —  April 25, 2010
• "Contacting Aliens 'A Bad Idea', Warns Hawking" — Sky News, April 25, 2010
• "Stay Home ET. UK Scientist: Aliens May Pose Risks" — ABC NEWS / AP, April 25, 2010
• "Hawking gives up academic title" — BBC News Online, September 30, 2009
• "How God propelled Stephen Hawking into the bestsellers lists" — The Guardian, July 31, 2009
• "Hubble's role in search for aliens" — BBC News Online, April 22, 2010
• "Birthdays Jan 10" — The Times, January 10, 2009
• "The Drake Equation and How It Helps SETI" — Articopia, December 20, 2008
• "One tenth of stars may support life" — New Scientist, January 1, 2004
• Michael Shermer. "Why ET Hasn't Called" — Scientific American, August 2002