“I am sure there is life out there. We cannot be the only ones. I don’t think we would be on any [aliens] tourist list. We are a pretty boring planet, orbiting a boring star,” said 89 years old Patrick Moore, a renowned astronomer. He said that it is quite possible that the planets supporting alien life will be found within the next 50 years.

“We have found other planets. The next stage is to detect the atmosphere. You can [then] work out if it has oxygen. We would know that supports life so we can look for it,” he said at the launch of his new book ‘The Cosmic Tourist ‘, which he wrote with his BBC1’s Sky at Night colleague, Dr Chris Lintott, from Oxford University, and Queen star Brian May, who is a close friend and a PhD in Astrophysics.

He also said that by the end of this century space tourism to the Moon, Mars and even the far reaches of the solar system would be possible.

“I can certainly imagine people paying to go to the Moon or Mars. Further than the solar system and you will have to wait a while. To get to the nearest stars would take tens of thousands of years,” Lintott said. He found a new planet, PH1, this week, which is about 5,000 lights years away and is present in a four star system.

On the other hand, previously Stephen Hawking, a renowned physicist, said that aliens are most probably present in the universe but humans should not contact them. He said aliens would raid Earth for resources.

“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,” he said.

He explained: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”

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