Aliens DO exist (or so half the British public believes)

Daily Mail, By FIONA MACRAE, 30th November 2010

If you are a down-to-earth sort, this might sound slightly alien – but almost half of Britons believe in little green men.

The truth is out there: Almost half of Britons believe in
UFOs, such as the 'Dudley Dorito', spotted three times
in recent years in UK skies

A poll of more than 2,000 adults found that 44 per cent are of the opinion extra-terrestrial life exists.

Men have the most faith in alien beings, with 46 per cent of those surveyed for the Royal Society, the country’s most prestigious scientific body, claiming that we are not alone in the universe.

And interest in ‘life but not as we know it’ does not end there, with more than a third of those questioned saying we should be actively trying to make contact with ET.

But that mission is made all the more difficult because opinion is divided on exactly what we’re looking for.

Professor Simon Conway Morris, a Cambridge University expert on evolution, said: ‘It might be that perhaps many centuries in the future we come back from an exhibition and give something to a mineralogist and he rings us up the next day and says, “By the way, you’ve just brought back an alien.”

‘In other words, it may be so different from what we expect that we have to throw away all our preconceptions.’

Reach out: A third of people questioned said we
should actively be trying to make contact with aliens

However, Professor Morris believes that ET will follow many of the same evolutionary rules as humans.

He added: ‘Life really has to follow the water and it also has to be based on carbon.

‘I am taking a gamble but I do think that when we do detect alien life, and it may be centuries away, it will be strikingly and embarrassingly like us.’

Others believe that aliens may have already visited.

Paul Davies, a British-born professor of cosmology at Arizona State University, said: ‘Sometime in the last billion years, it is not impossible that an alien artefact came this way, or even an alien exploration, even a colonisation wave that decided it wasn’t going to stay here forever.’

And it seems more of us have our head in the clouds than we might let on.

Just 28 per cent of those polled by YouGov said they didn’t believe in extra-terrestrial life – with the remaining 28 per cent admitting they simply couldn’t be sure.

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