There are currently no policies or reporting systems in place for experts to follow if they do make contact with intelligent life not of this world. Photo / Getty Images
There are currently no policies or reporting systems in place for experts to follow if they do make contact with intelligent life not of this world. Photo / Getty Images
The question "are we alone?" will earn you a few raised eyebrows and smirks at dinner parties, but it's one that international governments have invested billions of dollars into.
However, a leading astronomer has revealed that despite the buckets of cash tipped into searching for aliens, there are currently no policies or reporting systems in place for experts to follow if they do make contact with intelligent life not of this world.
Professor Fred Watson AM, Australia's Astronomer at Large, told news.com.au that, despite a large checklist to authenticate any supposed contact, there was no "take me to your leader" policy in known existence.
"There isn't anything in place … there's a well-established chain of boxes that need to be ticked and it would go through a lot of analysis to ensure that what your talking about is a real phenomenon," Watson said.
"However, once scientists identified what had happened, it'd then be up to the political leaders of the world to decide what to do about it, and as far as I'm aware, there's no plan in place."
It's a startling oversight by world governments that leaves all the responsibility in the hands of the often small research teams working on various contact projects.
Multiple signals have been picked up in the recent past by researchers that have sparked excitement in the wider scientific community.
However, Watson said the exhaustive authentication tests conducted by experts often ruled out the possibility of intelligent life almost instantly.
"When you take into account all the actual phenomena that could be related to it – and that gets rid of pretty much everything," he said.
"There was one case with the Breakthrough Listen Project – an initiative funded by a Russian Billionaire Yuri Milner at the level of $100 million, which uses two radio telescopes, one of which is in the Parkes radio telescope – that received a signal that had similarities to ones we send out ourselves.
The Alpha Centauri group, located approximately 4 light years away. Photo / NASA
"It came from our nearest star Proxima Centauri which we know has one vaguely Earth-like planet, and its frequency drifted because of the Doppler effect, similar to human radio signals.
"However, it was ruled out because other similar signals used by other radio sources around the telescope had exactly the same characteristics.
"If scientists had a high level of confidence in the signal though, then it would have been publicised in the scientific world."
With Nasa recently ramping up its (public) research into UFOs, excitement has grown in some corners of the internet about the possibility of pending public admission of alien contact from The Pentagon.
However, Watson said that, despite the odd exception, there was almost "universal" consensus in the scientific community that humans are nature's unexpected trophy.
"The overwhelming opinion is that while microbial life might exist … there's a gloomy outlook about there being intelligent life forms," he said.
"Getting from a microbe to a single-celled organism to where we are now as humans requires an incredible amount of energy … and that's before you even start the process of evolution.
"The common view is we are just a complete freak of nature – intelligent life is so rare and is such an unlikely event."
Prof Watson acknowledged that the sheer amount of stars and planets in the known universe – "10 to the power of 23 stars with at least one planet" – meant that statistically, it was highly unlikely that there wouldn't be other forms of intelligent life (known as the Fermi Paradox).
"We haven't seen any signs of intelligent life though – and that's likely because there aren't any," he said.
"If there is, it could be 2 billion light-years away, they might still be building with sticks because it's such a rarity."
While aliens and other worlds spark the imagination of even the most jaded academic, Prof Watson said there were more immediate issues – and dangers – from on high that astronomers were busy with.
"Our sun often emits solar flares, and that right there is a threat to our infrastructure," he said.
Solar flares are bursts of energy from the sun that direct a shower of magnetised particles in any direction.
