Aliens May Exist But Contact Would Hurt Humans: Hawking

LONDON (AFP) – Aliens may exist but mankind should avoid contact with them as the consequences could be devastating, British scientist Stephen Hawking warned Sunday.

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," said the astrophysicist in a new television series, according to British media reports.

The programmes depict an imagined universe featuring alien life forms in huge spaceships on the hunt for resources after draining their own planet dry.

"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach," warned Hawking.

The doomsday scenario is suggested in the series "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking" on the Discovery Channel, which began airing in the United States on Sunday.

On the probability of alien life existing, he says: "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational.

"The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."

Glowing squid-like creatures, herds of herbivores that can hang onto a cliff face and bright yellow predators that kill their prey with stinging tails are among the creatures that stalk the scientist's fantastical cosmos.

Mankind has already made a number of attempts to contact extraterrestrial civilisations.

In 2008, American space agency NASA beamed the Beatles song "Across the Universe" into deep space to send a message of peace to any alien that happens to be in the region of Polaris -- also known as the North Star -- in 2439.

But the history of humanity's efforts to contact aliens stretches back some years.

The US probes Pioneer 10 and 11 were launched in 1972 and 1973 bearing plaques of a naked man and woman and symbols seeking to convey the positions of the Earth and the Sun.

Voyager 1 and 2, launched in 1977, each carry a gold-plated copper phonogram disk with recordings of sounds and images on Earth.

Doomsday Clock Pushed Back 1 Minute

(CNN) -- The world has inched further away from doom and nuclear disaster, said a group of respected scientists that includes 19 Nobel Laureates.

The symbolic Doomsday Clock has been moved back a minute, reflecting the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' more optimistic view of the world's chances of avoiding catastrophic threats such as nuclear attacks.

The clock is now set at six minutes to midnight, with midnight representing a nuclear apocalypse, according to the group, which is based in Chicago, Illinois.

"We are poised to bend the arc of history toward a world free of nuclear weapons. For the first time since atomic bombs were dropped in 1945, leaders of nuclear weapons states are cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making material," the scientists said in a statement Thursday.

The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 and had been adjusted only 18 times before Thursday, the group said.

The closest it has been to midnight is two minutes, from 1953 to 1960, after the Soviet Union and the United States stepped up testing of thermonuclear devices.

The farthest has been 17 minutes, from 1991 to 1995, after the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

"A key to the new era of cooperation is a change in the U.S. government's orientation toward international affairs, brought about in part by the election of [President Barack] Obama," the group said. "With a more pragmatic, problem-solving approach, not only has Obama initiated new arms-reduction talks with Russia, he has started negotiations with Iran to close its nuclear enrichment program, and directed the U.S. government to lead a global effort to secure loose fissile material in four years.

"He also presided over the U.N. Security Council last September, where he supported a fissile material cutoff treaty and encouraged all countries to live up to their disarmament and nonproliferation obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty," said the group, which added that much more work needs to be done.

Threats remain around the world, the scientists said, noting that governments might not live up to pledges to reduce nuclear arms and combat climate change.

Scientists and other experts who had produced the atomic bomb for the Manhattan Project established the group in 1945, its Web site said.