ET phone home, modern earthlings ready for you now

PROOF that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is unlikely to upset modern earthlings, an expert claimed.

Times have changed dramatically since 1961 when the US Congress was warned evidence of extra-terrestrials would lead to widespread panic, argued psychologist Dr Albert Harrison. First contact with ET, or the discovery of ancient alien relics on Earth or Mars, would probably be met with delight or indifference today, he believes.

Dr Harrison, from the University of California at Davis, US, wrote in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: “The discovery of ETI (extra-terrestrial intelligence) may be far less startling for generations that have been brought up with word processors, electronic calculators, avatars and cell phones as compared with earlier generations used to typewriters, slide rules, pay phones and rag dolls.”