Professor Brian Cox has said that the main reason humans haven't been able to contact aliens is because they're already extinct.
Apparently, scientific advancements outpace the regulations controlling them - which leads to species destroying themselves.
"It may be that the growth of science and engineering inevitably outstrips the development of political expertise, leading to disaster," he told the Sunday Times. "We could be approaching that position."
That doesn't sound good, although he's not the first scientist to think it. The idea was first theorised by Enrico Fermi, the physicist who built the first nuclear reactor.
Quantum Mechanics explained in 60 seconds by Brian Cox. Credit: BBC
Cox also said: "One solution to the Fermi paradox is that it is not possible to run a world that has the power to destroy itself ,and that needs global collaborative solutions to prevent that."
If that is the case then it would mean finding life somewhere else in the Milky Way, perhaps by discovering bacteria or single-celled organisms in one of the galaxy's other oceans.
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Jupiter's moon, Europa, and Saturn's moon, Enceladus, are both are believed to have giant subsurface lakes that could potentially host life.
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