Aliens are usually portrayed in fiction as everything from little green men to reptilians.
But the truth could be that they look just like us.
Professor Simon Conway Morris, of Cambridge University says, in his new book The Runes Of Evolution, that life on planets that are similar to Earth could have evolved along the same lines as we did.
Plant and animal life could look similar to ours and the inhabitants could look human.
He also tackles the question many sceptics ask. If aliens exist, why haven’t they been in contact?
“The likelihood of intelligence evolving and actively engaging in some sort of trans-galactic expeditions doesn’t seem to be completely beyond the realm of possibility,” he says.
So they could be on their way and arrive at some time in the future – or maybe they’ve been visiting for centuries but never let on.
There are, off course, plenty of people who believe that is the case.
They say they designed the pyramids, built Atlantis, laid out landing sites for spaceships in Peru and cross-bred with locals after crash landing.
There are those who believe Jesus and Buddha were aliens from Venus and St Peter came from Mars.
These are not silly people – they don’t believe the moon is made from green cheese.
But there are those who say the moon is actually an alien spaceship that has been monitoring our progress for millennia.
If aliens have been visiting throughout history it supports the theory that they do, indeed, look like us.
A little green man or seven foot reptilian might have caused a stir trying to blend into a middle ages society that was prone to burn people at the stake for being different.
Before tourism, strangers arriving in a far distant place tried to blend in.
I did when I arrived from Manchester.
But then, I’ve been convinced for years that I’m an alien, that I was a cuckoo in the nest dropped off by a spaceship as an experiment to see if beings from another world could survive and thrive on Earth.
Hasn’t everybody had that
thought at some point?
The universe is vast and there are, without doubt, similar planets to ours where life might have evolved along similar lines.
Worlds that might have towns like Huddersfield and people like us.
Don’t you ever stare up at the night sky and think that maybe up there, third star from the sun, there’s a bloke staring back with that ageless question in the back of his mind: I wonder if Town will get promoted next season?
