Close encounters of the Failsworth kind

PROFESSOR Brian Cox has said he ‘wouldn’t be surprised if a UFO landed in Oldham tomorrow’ as he shared thoughts about life beyond Earth.

The leading Manchester physicist took to Twitter to post the surprising revelation, saying firstly he thought the Milky Way ‘may be filled with microbes but not complex living things at our level of intelligence’ but that ‘all thoughts are guesses’.

But he quickly clarified, writing: “BUT make no mistake, I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if a UFO landed in Oldham town centre tomorrow morning and the captain said ‘Take me to the leader of Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council’.”

He added if that did happen, he would ask them why gravity is so weak relative to the other forces of nature.

The remark came as Prof Cox, who is a professor of particle physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester, explained the ‘Fermi Paradox’ as the lack of firm evidence for alien intelligence.