A leading astronomer reveals there are currently no plans for how scientists are to report or respond to alien contact.

The question ‘are we alone?’ will earn you a few raised eyebrows and smirks at dinner parties, but it’s one that international governments have invested billions of dollars into.

However, a leading astronomer has revealed that despite the buckets of cash tipped into searching for aliens, there are currently no policies or reporting systems in place for experts to follow if they do make contact with intelligent life not of this world.

Professor Fred Watson AM, Australia’s Astronomer at Large, told news.com.au that, despite a large checklist to authenticate any supposed contact, there was no “take me to your leader” policy in known existence.

“There isn’t anything in place … there’s a well-established chain of boxes that need to be ticked and it would go through a lot of analysis to ensure that what your talking about is a real phenomenon,” Prof Watson said.

“However, once scientists identified what had happened, it’d then be up to the political leaders of the world to decide what to do about it, and as far as I’m aware, there’s no plan in place.”

It’s a startling oversight by world governments which leaves all the responsibility in the hands of the often small research teams working on various contact projects.

Multiple signals have been picked up in the recent past by researchers that have sparked excitement in the wider scientific community.

However, Prof Watson said the exhaustive authentication tests conducted by experts often ruled out the possibility of intelligent life almost instantly.

“When you take into account all the actual phenomena that could be related to it – and that gets rid of pretty much everything,” he said.

“There was one case with the Breakthrough Listen Project – an initiative funded by a Russian Billionaire, Yuri Milner, at the level of $100 million, which uses two radio telescopes, one of which is in Parkes radio telescope – that received a signal that had similarities to ones we send out ourselves.

“It came from our nearest star Proxima Centauri which we know has one vaguely Earth-like planet, and its frequency drifted because of the Doppler effect, similar to human radio signals.

“However, it was ruled out because other similar signals used by other radio sources around the telescope had exactly the same characteristics.

“If scientists had a high level of confidence in the signal though, then it would have been publicised in the scientific world.”

With NASA recently ramping up their (public) research into UFOs, excitement has grown in some corners of the internet about the possibility of pending public admission of alien contact from The Pentagon.

However, Prof Watson said that, despite the odd exception, there was almost “universal” consensus in the scientific community that humans are nature‘s unexpected trophy.

“The overwhelming opinion is that while microbial life might exist … there’s a gloomy outlook about there being intelligent life forms,” he said.

“Getting from a microbe to a single-celled organism to where we are now as humans requires an incredible amount of energy … and that’s before you even start the process of evolution.

“The common view is we are just a complete freak of nature – intelligent life is so rare and is such an unlikely event.”

Prof Watson acknowledged that the sheer amount of stars and planets in the known universe – “10 to the power of 23 stars with at least one planet” – meant that statistically, it was highly unlikely that there wouldn’t be other forms of intelligent life (known as the Fermi Paradox).

“We haven’t seen any signs of intelligent life though – and that’s likely because there aren’t any,” he said.

“If there is, it could be 2 billion light-years away, they might still be building with sticks because it’s such a rarity.”

While aliens and other worlds spark the imagination of even the most jaded academic, Prof Watson said there were more immediate issues – and dangers – from on high that astronomers were busy with.

“Our sun often emits solar flares, and that right there is a threat to our infrastructure,” he said.

Solar flares are bursts of energy from the sun that direct a shower of magnetised particles in any direction.

If the earth happens to be in that direction, the results to the global power grid can be devastating.

“The biggest one we know of was in 1859, known as the Carrington Event, and if that happened today it would cause mass blackouts and power failures around the world – even disrupting the internet,” Prof Watson warned.

“The largest flare recently was in 1989, and it knocked out the power grid in Quebec for 12 hours because the magnetic fields tripped all the circuit breakers.

“So much of our infrastructure depends on satellites operating properly and they’re at risk from the currents that could be let off by the sun that causes these issues.

“A Carrington event today would cause mass power failures and blackouts … governments are aware of the potential of this, so they’re building as much protection as they can, but something that big could overwhelm the protection.”

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For more than 30 years, the “elusive” picture has remained a secret, yet it forms one of the “biggest mysteries” in UFO history.

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