Do you believe that there is life elsewhere in Universe, beyond Earth?
What about extra-terrestrial intelligence? Could it be possible that there exists – or has existed – an advanced civilisation beyond our Solar System?
Do you give any credence to reports of alien craft visiting Earth, or do you favour the more subtle, scientific approach to the search for alien life?
Perhaps you believe there’s no-one else out there in the cosmos: it’s just us.
Academics at Durham Law School and St Andrews University in the UK are conducting a worldwide, online survey to gather opinions and thoughts on the possibility of humanity making contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.
If you have strong opinions either way on the topic of alien life, these researchers want to hear from you.
Interest in the prospect of life beyond Earth has soared in recent years, most popularly surrounding conversations about UFOs, or UAPs, in the mainstream media.
In July 2023, the US Congress held a hearing on the subject of UFOs, and in September that year, NASA held a UFO briefing.
But UFOs aside, there is new hope for finding signs of life beyond Earth within the fields of exoplanet science and astrobiology.
To many, it feels like we’ve never been closer to answering that fundamental question: “are we alone?”
“The aim is to find out attitudes from a wide variety of people and cultures across the globe to the questions posed by the idea that humanity might make contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence someday, or may already have done so,” a statement from the survey says.
“It will be asking for views on issues such as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), UAP/UFOs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena/Flying Objects), how people would cope with a contact event, and how humanity as a whole should deal with it.”
The survey is administered by Professor Michael Bohlander, Chair in Global Law and SETI Policy and Dr Andreas Anton, Research Fellow, both Durham Law School (UK), in cooperation with Dr John Elliott, Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews.
Find out how to take the extraterrestrial intelligence survey.