A Norwich scientist today broke the hearts of people who dream of a close encounter with aliens - after he dismissed the chance of humans ever making contact with extra terrestrials.

Scientists at the University of East Anglia have produced a mathematical model suggesting the odds of finding new life on other planets are less than 0.01pc over four billion years, which means mankind will have died out before ET ever comes calling.

The findings are based on the time it has taken for humans to evolve compared with the remaining life span of Earth.

According to Prof Andrew Watson, from the school of environmental sciences, intelligent life evolved late on Earth through several difficult evolutionary steps.

According to his study, which published in the journal Astrobiology, the future life span of Earth will be about another billion years which is too short a time compared to the four billion years since life first appeared on the planet.

He said: “The Earth's biosphere is now in its old age and this has implications for our understanding of the likelihood of complex life and intelligence arising on any given planet.

“At present, Earth is the only example we have of a planet with life. If we learned the planet would be habitable for a set period and we had evolved early in this period, then we would suspect evolution from simple to complex and intelligent life was quite likely to occur.

“We now believe we evolved late in the habitable period, and this suggests that our evolution is rather unlikely. In fact, the timing of events is consistent with it being very rare indeed.”

But John Sayer, of Norwich UFO Society, said: “I think it's a load of cobblers. Earth-bound maths and reasoning may not apply outside this planet and how can they work that out when that don't even know how big the universe is?”

Mark Thompson, chairman of Norwich Astronomical Society, agreed too little is known about the universe to make such “sweeping statements.”

He said: “I think it's rash and very pessimistic in the extreme. We have discovered 150 planets in the last 20 years and current projects will enable us to detect Earth-sized planets at a significant distance which will increase the chances of finding intelligent life.

“I don't think we will be able to do it with generations at the moment but will we find intelligent life within the next four or five billion years? Absolutely.”

Copyright:  Evening News 24