Nearly half of Earthlings believe that we aren’t alone in the universe — and want to make contact with alien life, according to a new study.
Researchers say the results help to explain the lasting popularity of the ‘Star Wars’ franchise 40 years after the first movie was screened.
But making contact could be dangerous for humanity. Physicist Professor Stephen Hawking has previously warned if aliens discovered us, it could ‘end life on Earth’.
Researchers published findings that 47 percent of more than 26,000 respondents believe ‘in the existence of intelligent alien civilizations in the universe’.
An even greater 61 per cent said ‘yes’ when asked if they believe in ‘some form of life on other planets’, researchers at Amsterdam-based research program Glocalities found.
Roughly a quarter said they do not believe intelligent life exists beyond Earth, they found.
This is not the first survey to collect views on extraterrestrial beings – questionnaires in Germany, Britain and the United States have found similar rates – but researchers said this was the largest poll of its kind with such global reach.
‘The high score on the belief in the existence of intelligent alien civilisations and the distinct profile of these people partly explains the immense popularity of space movies such as Star Wars,’ said research director Martijn Lampert.
‘People who believe in the existence of intelligent alien civilisations are not a marginal minority,’ he said.
The most believers in intelligent alien life were in Russia, at 68 per cent, trailed closely by Mexico and China, with the down-to-earth Dutch bottoming out the list at 28 per cent, the poll found.
The interviews were conducted in 15 languages between December 2015 and February 2016 in countries representing 62 per cent of the world’s population and 80 per cent of the global economy.
However, some experts believe we should be extremely wary about answering alien signals.
If there are any intelligent alien life forms out there Professor Hawking thinks we’re playing a dangerous game by trying to contact them.
The physicist believes if aliens discovered Earth, they are likely to want to conquer and colonise our planet.
‘If aliens visit us, the outcome could be much like when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,’ he said in an interview.
Last week psychologists also revealed that if we did discover alien life most people would still be happy about it.
Michael Varnum, a psychologist at Arizona State University was trying to anticipate how humans would react if a discovery like this came back positive.
The paper looked at the psychological reactions to extraterrestrial life in a ‘systematic, careful way’.
In the first experiment Dr Varnum and his colleagues looked at five key events; the discovery of pulsars in 1967; the detection of the ‘Wow!’ radio signal in 1977; the announcement of fossilised microbes on a Martian meteorite in 1996; the behaviour of Tabby’s Star in 2005 and the discovery of exoplanets within the Goldilocks zone in 2017.
‘The reaction seemed to be much more positive than negative,’ found Dr Varnum.
Researchers also got 500 people to describe how they would feel if aliens were discovered and how they thought people more generally would react.
Participants said they themselves would feel positive but felt most people would not be so excited about the discovery.
Life is not a mystery, it comes as a result of chemistry, which is derived from physics, and the behavior of charged particles. One would conclude it is universal, however it is difficult to extrapolate it’s diversity, based upon earthly observation. There is a further
Issue at play, in that DNA double helix may not be the only mode for living chemistry.
What happens it the building block of life is built on a fractal, what would that look like? Things to consider.
50 percent believe in aliens?
That’s about double the amount that believe in global warming!
The Fermi Paradox says “where is everybody” but completely ignores the UFO phenomenon, which is also ignored by Stephen Hawking.
My point is, if even one of the increasing number of UFOs people are reporting turns out to be alien, it not only solves the Fermi Paradox, it also goes a long way to prove that any species advanced enough to travel interstellar space isn’t a threat to mankind. After all, they got here without our “help”, didn’t they?
While Earth might be special to us, there aren’t any resources here that can’t be found throughout the universe by a species with, for the sake of argument, a million years more evolution under their belt.
We could be embracing the possibility of meeting extraterrestrials with wonder instead of cowering in fear. It makes no sense, we can’t hide the planet, it’s too late for that, we’ve been a radio wave emitting beacon for a long time and now we’re emitting even more complex signals than ever before. It’s like children making too much noise in their room and then being afraid when the adults show up to see what all the noise is about.
In the end I think it’s because we’re not yet a rational species. We react first and think later. It’s definitely not a good sign when our best and brightest ignore evidence like UFO sightings because it’s too ephemeral to quantify, too hard to study UFOs scientifically, or because their fragile egos don’t want to be thought of as crackpots. But if I can can put logic like this together, so can Stephen Hawking. I just wish he would already, times a wasting.
Before they were called Demons and when people turned from God they became Aliens as they wanted nothing to do with God.
When the fallen angels created children from human women, these children were the demigods of yesteryear that we still have legends off i.e. Hercules.
These demons are the evil spirits that remained after their mortal bodies were destroyed in the floods of Noah looking for people, things to inhabit and why they are especially fond of those that call them e.g. those that practice the occult. In exchange for the powers these Demons give they inhabit that person and messed them up to the point they are only fit for Hell if they do not get rid of them.
Nostradamus tells us that these demigods will come back into being in their own bodies(Cloned bodies), a great race recreated, Esdra tells us that menstrual women will give birth to monsters and the way these things are going it is not that hard to believe this will come true.
These Aliens will come from this world because of Human intervention in bring these demons back into physical form.
There is no alien life – intelligent or otherwise.