The researcher looked at the frequency of human invasions in the last 50 years to try and work out the likelihood of an alien invasion
A researcher has suggested there may be four alien civilisations in our galaxy, the Milky Way, that could attack planet Earth.
Alberto Caballero, a PhD student at the University of Vigo in Spain, wrote a study in the International Journal of Astrobiology earlier this month in which he tried to establish the likelihood of an alien invasion.
In his paper, titled “
Estimating the Prevalence of Malicious Extraterrestrial Civilizations,” Caballero researched the frequency of human invasions of other nations in the last 50 years.
He then took this data and applied it to the number of known "exoplanets" in the Milky Way, which is estimated to be around 15,785.
The conclusion? There could be four "malicious" alien civilisations in our galaxy, and scientists should be cautious in trying to contact extraterrestrials because it could provoke an invasion.
But Caballero conceded that his paper has "some limitations." The paper has not been peer-reviewed and is largely considered nothing more than a "thought experiment."
He told
Vice: “I did the paper based only on life as we know it.
“We don’t know the mind of extraterrestrials. An extraterrestrial civilization may have a brain with a different chemical composition and they might not have our empathy or they might have more psychopathological behaviors,” he said.
“I found this way to do [the study], which has limitations, because we don’t know the mind of what aliens would be like.”
Caballero also admitted that the odds of an extraterrestrial civilisation wiping out the Earth is the same as the planet being destroyed by an asteroid.
This sort of event only happens once every 100 million years, so rest easy for now everyone.
But this doesn't mean potential security threats from outer space haven't been given genuine thought.
The US government has been putting a lot of effort into researching alien civilisations.
Earlier this year, official US files showed the Pentagon has been
researching how to communicate with alien civilisations. The documents stated that there could be 4,590 extraterrestrial civilisations in our universe, with the nearest one a mere 1,933 to 2,670 light years away.
And last year, a US government report into UFOs
refused to rule out alien activity as a potential explanation for sightings.
These findings were from a military task force set up by the White House to look into unexplained sightings within US airspace.
The report concluded that there were 144 incidents of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) that couldn't be explained between 2004 and 2021. Of these, 18 appeared to "demonstrate advanced technology."
This led the US government to then
set up another task force to look into reports of UAP near US military facilities.
According to the
Pentagon, the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group was set up to "synchronize efforts across the Department and the broader U.S. government to detect, identify and attribute objects of interests in Special Use Airspace (SUA), and to assess and mitigate any associated threats to safety of flight and national security."
It added: "Incursions by any airborne object into our SUA pose safety of flight and operations security concerns, and may pose national security challenges."
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