Greetings! We earthlings will give aliens a real welcome

SCIENCE fiction films about alien encounters often suggest the little green men should be feared.

But US research shows we would welcome extra-terrestrial life when – or if – we make contact. Humans would be ‘pretty upbeat’ on discovering we weren’t alone in the universe, it was claimed.

To test how people might react to aliens visiting Earth, scientists from Arizona State University analysed newspaper reports about the potential for alien life in our solar system.

Assistant psychology professor Michael Varnum said yesterday: ‘If we came face-to-face with life outside of Earth, we would actually be pretty upbeat about it.’

He also told the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual conference: ‘So far, there’s been a lot of speculation about how we might respond, but until now, almost no systematic empirical research.’

He and his colleagues used a computer to analyse language in the press about potential extraterrestrial life discoveries.

Examples included reports in 1996 of microbes on Mars; 2015 reports of periodic dimming around a star which might indicate alien life; and a 2017 report on Earth-like planets.

The study found that language in the reports showed significantly more positive than negative emotions.