Top scientist gives his verdict on if aliens are real
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People should stop looking for Bigfoot, the Yeti and Nessie because they don’t exist – but we should keep looking for aliens. That’s the verdict from Tim Coulson, a professor of Zoology at Oxford University, who knows more than most about the weird giant beasts that may roam the edges of the wild.
![[A view of the Loch Ness Monster, near Inverness, Scotland, April 19, 1934. The photograph, one of two pictures known as the 'surgeon's photographs,' was allegedly taken by Colonel Robert Kenneth Wilson, though it was later exposed as a hoax by one of the participants, Chris Spurling, who, on his deathbed, revealed that the pictures were staged by himself, Marmaduke and Ian Wetherell, and Wilson. References to a monster in Loch Ness date back to St. Columba's biography in 565 AD. More than 1,000 people claim to have seen 'Nessie' and the area is, consequently, a popular tourist attraction. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/SEI_231202989-a45d.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
He said this week that most cryptids (animals reported to exist but without proof) are scientifically impossible. On the other hand, there’s a ‘good possibility’ that aliens exist. ‘The universe is absolutely vast, and we have only explored a very tiny fragment of it,’ he wrote in The European.
‘Unlike the forests where Bigfoot is supposed to live, or the mountainous home of the Yeti, we have only explored a miniscule corner of the places where aliens may be found.’. The existence of aliens is often put in a basket with fabled creatures on Earth, but the likelihoods of life on other planets is vastly more likely, he said.
Professor Coulson is widely considered to be one of the world’s foremost authorities on biology and evolution, so if he thinks aliens could be out there, we’re listening. If they are, however, he isn’t confident that we’ll find them. We first sent out radio signals into space around 120 years ago, so even if an intelligent alien was listening and immediately replied, they would have to be within 60 light years of Earth for us to hear it.
