Well would you believe it? Stephen Hawking, one of the worlds most foremost scientists, has announced that aliens almost certainly exist and that we shouldn't meet them because they'll be horrible to us and nick all our resources. Joking aside, I agree the risks of cultural shock are very real and as I've written a couple of times in the past, contact with more powerful and sophisticated civilisations isn't such a good thing. I also note that it's taken until now to for Mr Hawking to reach that conclusion thus I can justifiably claim to be cleverer than he is. I am ahead of his time.

In fact, Mr Hawking uses real-world analogies to make his point, quoting the example of the european conquistadors arriving in central america. He might also have pointed at the kago cults of the pacific region, where jungle tribesmen build bamboo 'radios' to contact the 'iron birds' that bring food and other good stuff, having experienced the logistics of world war two for themselves. Now as for Hawkings idea that these creatures would be nomads on vast interstellar ships, I have to say that's merely imagination however convenient it may seem to his ordered mind. There are any number of other possibilities, and as I'm sure he'll admit (seeing as he wants to remain gainfully employed), we don't know everything yet.

I know there are people who believe aliens are already here, visiting for the purposes of barbeques and abductions in the name of experiment and erotic sex, and that Area 51 is where we get our own back on them for doing that, but apart from lots of special effects in the skies there really isn't any hard evidence. So one theory dating back to the eighties is that clever and paranoid aliens have built robotic starships packed with terrible weaponry that home in on any sign of civilisation and remove their potential rivals with big ray guns. So that's why we don't get any answers to our our hails (besides the huge distances and times these electromagnetic messages must traverse). All the recipients are already zapped.

Oh yeah. I forgot. Didn't the Maya predict the end of the world in December 2012? Well they should know. They've suffered it once already at the hands of the Spanish.

More Aliens

Ridley Scott is to make two prequels to the Alien films. He's working on the first already, and in it we get to find out who the 'space jockey' in the original film was. Get a move on Ridley. The world ends in two years.