A boffin at the Bulgarian national Space Research Institute has stated that not only are aliens living among us, but that they object strongly to "immoral behaviour" by humanity - such as causing global warming. "Unnatural" acts such as use of cosmetics and "artificial insemination" are also frowned upon by the extraterrestrial visitors.

Luchezar Filipov, deputy head of the space institute at the government's Bulgarian Academy of Science, made these startling assertions to Bulgarian media earlier this week.

The Sofia Echo, referencing other local media, quotes the eminent space brainbox as stating that "they [aliens] are here right now, among us" and that the extraterrestrials are "conducting surveillance" and - chillingly - "research" on humanity.

“They are currently all around us, and are watching us all the time. They are not hostile towards us; rather, they want to help us but we have not grown enough in order to establish direct contact with them," said the Bulgarian boffin, according to Sofia news agency novinite.com.

Reportedly Filipov and unnamed colleagues have elicited this information by decrypting messages hidden within crop circles. The crop-circle "pictograms" were said to have been a response to questions posed by the Academy scientists.

Crop-circle comms being unreliable, Filipov apparently feels that future direct contact will come through the medium of "mental power and telepathy". However, some basic themes have apparently been made clear.

"The aliens are very critical of our immoral behaviour and our destruction of the environment," says Filipov, according to the Echo. "They say that global warming is attributed mainly to infrastructural engineering."

Presumably the star-travelling aliens have long ago graduated to advanced energy sources such as nuclear fusion or antimatter, and sneer at our pathetic fossil-fuelled civilisation.

Filipov stated that the alien spies in our midst have other objections to our lifestyle, too.

"They are very skeptical of our use of cosmetics, and artificial insemination because this is unnatural," he reportedly said.

There was no word on the aliens' views on gang-probing of humans abducted as part of their "research" programme.

Read all about it from the Echo and novinite.com here and here. ®