Have we ever been visited by aliens? Some claim to have actually seen a UFO while others have even reported being whisked away inside an alien space vessel, but although visitation by an advanced life form is an exciting prospect, there are reasons to be sceptical.

There is no technological evidence that Earth has been a privileged host to superior minds. No extraterrestrial space debris has been found in Earth orbit, none has been found on the Moon, and there is no evidence that any has been left on Earth soil. Those who have actually seen rather than hallucinated unexplained flying objects seem to fall quickly towards the interpretation of alien visitation rather than staying with the fact of what they actually saw, an unexplained flying object. For example, in July 2001, a flight patrol in Mexico searching for drug smugglers captured curious images on an infra-red camera which some declared to be UFOs. On closer inspection, they turned out to be flares emitted from oil platforms.  In December 2009, thousands of Norwegians witnessed the phenomenon of a circular spinning white light trailed by a blue tail. Those who preferred to believe that they were being visited from afar were disappointed to learn that all they had been witnessing was a failed Russian ballistic missile launch.

Considering the millions of stars available to our detectors, a civilisation comparable in achievement to ours very probably exists out there. However, the distance they would have to travel to find us would be far greater than their technological capability would permit, quite apart from the miracle of navigation they would need to locate the precise direction of Earth. In fact, they would have to be significantly more advanced than us to even contemplate negotiating the vast distance. This brings us to a further difficulty. The chance that a civilisation could maintain itself long enough to develop the requisite technology must be incredibly small, because the longer it exists, the greater is the chance of its annihilation by uncontrollable disease, lack of mineral resources, self destruction, or even the impact of a meteor. On Earth, an impacting space rock greater than 1km diameter is a catastrophe that occurs once every 500 thousand years.

So it seems that we're completely and utterly alone with each other on our small island rock in the middle of nowhere in particular. However, don't despair too much ... look on the bright side ... because there follows a fun puzzle to try on the subject of aliens!

If you found an extraterrestrial being like the one shown below what would he be in?

Last Week's Solution

The person from history is Buzz Aldrin who flew to the Moon on the Apollo 11 mission.

(1) The fish form the number "69" and it was in July 1969 that man first set foot on the Moon.
(2) The man is stepping between two rocks, which could be the Earth and the Moon.
(3) "B=2"; Buzz Aldrin was the second man to walk on the Moon.
(4) The "ZZZ" could be a buzzing sound; Buzz Aldrin.
(5) The man is walking on a sea and the "ZZZ" could be dozing; Apollo 11 touched down in the Sea of Tranquility.
(6) The man is a letter A, the flag is a P, the first rock is an O, the two light beams are L and L, and the second rock is an O, which spells APOLLO.
(7) The two beams could be an 11 for Apollo 11.
(8)  The two light beams might signify Apollo the God of the Sun.

Congratulations to Creativity Post reader Kon_Dao for somehow finding the right path to the solution!