The Astronomer Royal has asked “cranks” to stop writing to him about their alien experiences, insisting any extraterrestrials would more likely be an electronic entity than a little green man.
Professor Lord Rees added that aliens would be unlikely to be “flesh and blood” and “could be a million years ahead of us”.
The 79-year-old, a former president of The Royal Society, urged anyone wanting to inform him of an extraterrestrial encounter or alien abduction to write to each other instead.
“I get letters from people who say they have been abducted by aliens, they have met them, etc.,” he said in The Telegraph.
“I respond with cynicism to such letters by saying, ‘Is it really likely that if the aliens had made a huge effort to get here, would they just have met one or two well-known cranks and gone away again?’ It seems unlikely.
“So I tell these people to write to each other and not to me. If we do detect something it is not likely to be flesh and blood.
“It is far more likely to be an electronic entity. It is unlikely to be synchronised with us - it could be a million years ahead of us,” he told an audience at the Hay Festival.
Professor Rees also predicted that any humans who settle on Mars would become cyborgs within a couple of generations.
Elon Musk's SpaceX Mars programme aims to start sending crews to the red planet in 2026 and Professor Rees said that, if successful, those living there could become a “mix of flesh and blood and robot” within a couple of generations.
However, he also warned that it was far easier to deal with climate change on Earth rather than colonise Mars.
Professor Rees also claimed that the moon landings were in danger of becoming ancient history, comparing the perspective younger generations have of them to that of the Egyptians building the pyramids.
He also said that astronauts visiting the International Space Station, which “rather unglamorously” orbits the Earth, did not provide much excitement.
