Aliens exist, and they may be out to get you — or so says legendary astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who cautions that attempting to contact E.T.s could result in humanity's total annihilation. "If aliens ever visit us," says Hawking, "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." Are Contact-style programs to reach out across the stars putting our world at risk? (Watch a Fox report about Stephen Hawking's alien claims)
Fortunately, most ETs are probably too dumb to kill us: Since "Hawking theorizes that most life would be microbial," says Jack Loftus in Gizmodo, death by alien invasion is only "the worst case scenario" — at least "so long as deep space's version of microbiology doesn't have access to a death ray."
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