An astronomer has claimed that the human race has taken the wrong approach to hunting for aliens.
Spaceship
Seth Shostak, who works for the SETI Institute, has urged those who are hunting for extraterrestrials to stop paying attention to planets capable of housing human life.
He said: "If aliens are intelligent enough to seek out Earth, they will probably have gone beyond biological smarts and, indeed, beyond biology itself.
"If extraterrestrials come to Earth, the ensuing scenario would be quite different than picking up an alien radio signal or detecting a flashing laser in the sky, modes of discovery being pursued by my colleagues and myself.
"The aliens producing such signals will be light years away, and their appearance and intentions wouldn’t be of much concern.
"But those of anyone landing their spacecraft on our turf would be."
The saucer spotter went on to explain that the biggest problem humans are making when searching for alien life is approaching it with a "human-centred" point of view as it’s wrong to assume that planets capable of hosting human life are the same for aliens.