Professor Keith Horne: Visitors may arrive in our world through the internet

WITH so many stars in so many galaxies, habitats suitable for life almost certainly exist on other planets somewhere in the universe.

However, it may be that life almost never gets started, even when conditions are perfect.

Once life arises, what are the odds that it will evolve a species with intelligence and technology similar to or more capable than our own?

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The fossil evidence shows that life started fairly early in Earth's history, so I would bet that most suitably habitable planets do have primitive life forms.

But our technologically capable civilisation took a very long time to emerge on Earth, suggesting that this could be very rare.

I think if we do find alien life we will recognise it as life, but it may well be adapted to an environment very different from our own.

It seems unlikely that aliens are here now and trying to contact us. We have certainly been on the lookout, and if their technology is so capable and they are trying to understand us and communicate with us, we would probably have very good evidence of this.

If they do come, they may actually arrive through our internet. It is very difficult to travel through space, the distances are so vast, and much easier to send information on a beam of light or a radio wave.

In theory with the right technology you could travel from star to star at the speed of light, entering the computer network on any planet that has developed one.

Alien life may enter our world that way, taking the form of self-replicating computer programmes, feeling their way around our cyberspace to learn about us, and figuring out how to survive there, and eventually to make contact.

• Professor Keith Horne, is an astronomer at the SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews

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