04 January 2023 , 12:00
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Aliens are yet to contact Earth because there's no sign of intelligence on our planet, a new study has claimed.
Author Amri Wandel believes extra-terrestrials aren't getting the signals you would expect, so have thus far avoided coming close.
The expert, an astrophysicist at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has put forward a theory as to why aliens have yet to pay us a visit - but things may soon change.
He feels because humans have only been sending out signals detectable from space since the 1930s, they just aren't responding to the messages.
Only stars within 50 light-years have had time to respond since Earth started its space broadcast, the writer outlined.
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Amri Wandel wrote that it takes time for any return message from aliens to travel back (Getty Images/iStockphoto)A Beacon in the Galaxy message could in the future be fired into space to be received and understood by an alien civilisation.
The researcher's preprint paper has just been published to the arXiv database.
He wrote: "The contact probability is defined as the chance to find a nearby civilisation located close enough so that it could have detected the earliest radio emissions (the radiosphere) and sent a probe that would reach the Solar System at present.
"It is found that the current contact probability for Earth is very low unless civilisations are extremely abundant.
A Beacon in the Galaxy message, which could soon be fired into space (MDPI/NASA)"Since the radiosphere expands with time, so does the contact probability.'
He went on: "The Contact Era is defined as the time (since the onset of radio transmissions) at which the contact probability becomes of order unity. At that time alien probes (or messages) become more likely.
"Unless civilisations are highly abundant, the Contact Era is shown to be of the order of a few hundred to a few thousand years and may be applied not only to physical probes but also to transmissions (i.e. SETI).
"Consequently, it is shown that civilisations are unlikely to be able to inter-communicate unless their communicative lifetime is at least a few thousand years."
It could just be a matter of time until we get a visit (Getty Images)Meanwhile, the first British astronaut to blast into outer space claims aliens do exist and believes they could be living invisibly among us on Earth.
Dr Helen Sharman was a 27-year-old food chemist when she visited Russia's Mir space station in May 1991.
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She applied and was selected - beating out more than 13,000 others - after hearing a call for potential astronauts on the radio while driving home from work.
Almost 30 years on from her historic achievement, the Sheffield-born national hero said extra-terrestrial life could be living right under our noses.
Dr Sharman, 56, told theObserver Magazine:"Aliens exist, there’s no two ways about it.
"There are so many billions of stars out there in the universe that there must be all sorts of different forms of life.
"Will they be like you and me, made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. It’s possible they’re here right now and we simply can’t see them."