Are aliens from space waiting to invade? Probably not, say the scientists

The prospect for an alien invasion of Earth has been flooding the Internet in recent weeks thanks to the object 3-I-ATLAS currently hurtling through our solar system which some have warned may be an alien spacecraft that can attack our planet. Spoiler alert - NASA says it isn't. But even so, the fears of alien invasion are nothing new: in the final years of the nineteenth century, in his novel War of the Worlds, British author H G Wells wrote that 'minds immeasurably greater than our own, across the gulf of space, made their plans against us'. So what is the likelihood of an alien invasion? In this edition of Weekend One on One, Jason Wright, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Centre looks into whether it could happen here.

A cinema hoarding for the 2005 film 'War of the Worlds' Source: Getty

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