IT IS unlikely that there is intelligent alien life on other planets as we would have encountered it by now, according to British scientist and astrobiologist Dr Lewis Dartnell.
He said it was not far-fetched to talk about the possibility of primitive bacterial life on Mars or Jupiter’s moon Europa and it was well worth exploring this.
And it was not unrealistic to expect that there could be other Earth-like planets out there, among the hundreds of billions of planets.
But if there was intelligent life out there in our galaxy, it would have visited us by now, he said. And if we had been visited, we would know about it.
Dr Dartnell said he did not subscribe to the conspiracy theories about UFOs and said it was unrealistic to think that the world’s governments could stop a secret like that from getting out.
The author of Life in the Universe: A Beginner's Guide,Dr Dartnell is based at University College London and was in Dublin to address Astronomy Ireland's public lecture at Trinity College Dublin last night.
Speaking before giving his address – entitled The Hunt for Alien Life– he said he was often asked what aliens would look like, if they existed on other planets.
He said alien trees would probably resemble our trees and it was reasonable to expect that alien animals would have features such as lungs, a skeleton and a head.
Features such as eyes and wings were so useful that evolution had hit upon them time and time again but it was a quirk that humans had two arms and two legs, so there was no reason why an intelligent alien might not have three pairs of legs.
Dr Dartnell’s talk at Trinity College will be available on DVD and can be ordered on Astronomy Ireland’s website astronomy.ie.
