Question: Do you think Aliens are real?

Jon Copley answered on 21 Jun 2010:

If by aliens you mean any form of extraterrestrial life, then yes, I think that is likely – even elsewhere within our Solar System. But I don’t think it is likely to be intelligent life, or even complex organisms made up of lots of different types of cells like animals and plants are. Elsewhere in our Solar System, I think there may be microbial life, like bacteria, for example at undersea volcanoes that we think may be lurking at the bottom of an ocean covered by ice on Jupiter’s moon Europa.

As for whether there is complex life like animals and plants, or intelligent life, elsewhere in our galaxy, who knows? It is possible, because even just our own galaxy is a very big place (and astronomers are now starting to detect lots of planetary systems around other stars). But it may be very, very hard for intelligent life elsewhere to physically visit us (or for us to visit them), because of the nature of the Universe (star systems even within our galaxy are a very long way apart…).

However, if you mean “Aliens” specifically like the ones in the movies Alien, Aliens ( <- my favourite film), Alien3, Alien Resurection and the Alien Vs Predator ones, then no. But there are animals very similar to them, in terms of their life cycle, here on Earth.

They're called parasitoid wasps, and they lay their eggs inside the bodies of other animals (like caterpillars), and then their offspring bursts out of the body of their host when they hatch – just like the "Aliens" do.