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Stephen Hawking: Aliens might hate us

The world famous scientist says humans shouldn't be enthusiastic about making contact with beings from other planets.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

I know many of you cannot wait for the day when we encounter little green people over a beer, or perhaps even turn into them.

However, one of the world's most celebrated scientific brains, Stephen Hawking, wonders whether aliens and humans really can co-exist.

According to the Times of London, Hawking has made a new documentary, "Stephen Hawking's Universe," for the Discovery Channel, which is scheduled to be broadcast in May. In this film, which took three years to make, Hawking offers his view of what really might be out there.

He doesn't paint an entirely attractive picture. Though he has no doubt that, because of simple mathematical deduction, there are other beings in the galaxy, he doesn't imagine they might be either especially pleasant or especially bright.

He may just want to eat your toenails. CC Steam Pirate/Flickr

In the documentary, Hawking isn't optimistic that too many alien beings will be intelligent or even particularly dangerous, but if humans ever came into contact with them, he really fears for us rather than them.

"If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans," the Times quotes him as saying.

And just in case your stomach begins to churn, even without an alien inside it, Hawking expanded: "I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach."

Indeed, these might be extra-terrestrial Visigoth yuppies who would just come here for our Priuses and our In-N-Out burgers.

I do so wish someone could offer us some heartening hope that aliens might arrive and help us to emerge in an uplifting way from the supreme domination of Earth's oppressive triumvirate of Goldman Sachs, the Gosselins, and the New York Yankees.