Aliens ‘wouldn’t faze modern world’

Proof that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is unlikely to upset modern earthlings, an expert has claimed.

Times have changed dramatically since 1961 when the US Congress was warned that evidence of extra-terrestrials would lead to widespread panic, argued psychologist Albert Harrison.

First contact with ET, or the discovery of ancient alien relics on Earth or Mars, would probably be met with delight or indifference today, he believes.

Dr Harrison, from the University of California at Davis, US, wrote in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: “The discovery of ETI (extra-terrestrial intelligence) may be far less startling for generations that have been brought up with word processors, electronic calculators, avatars and cell phones as compared with earlier generations used to typewriters, slide rules, pay phones and rag dolls.”

People had been getting used to the idea of ET since the Seti (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) project first began listening out for alien radio signals 50 years ago, said Dr Harrison.

Today, surveys suggest that half the population of the US and Europe believe extra-terrestrials exist, and a “substantial proportion” were convinced alien spacecraft had already visited the earth.

As long ago as the 1840s a popular New York newspaper reported on the discovery of “batmen” on the moon. Later it was widely accepted that astronomers had found evidence of canals built by a dying civilisation on Mars.