Stephen Hawking’s Alien Warning: Let’s not Contact them, After All

Stephen Hawking: “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans…

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”

In what I have to imagine will be one of the better headlines you are going to read today, scientist Stephen Hawking offers some sage advice on how to deal with an alien encounter. Truth be told, after all the dim, earthbound news of late, close encounters of the third kind offers a nice change of newsy pace. Hawking weighed in on the matter in a series for the Discovery Channel, and really, someone should be thinking about these things.

Because now’s as good a time for it as any, here’s the now-legendary remix of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, featuring slick contributions from Stephen Hawking himself:

(this post adapted from Mediaite)