There is a conference going on right now in London, where some of the world's leading scientists are discussing one thing: aliens.
Of the space variety, not the ones Joe Arpaio herds into his jails like cattle.
Speaking at the London Royal Society conference is Arizona State University Professor Paul Davies, the physicist who penned a 2007 Scientific American article titled "Are Aliens Among Us?"
The conference is set to examine some of the, um, more pressing issues the world is facing when it comes to aliens, such as, "What will alien life look like if we find it? Will we be meeting life-forms incredibly similar to ourselves, or will they be the frightful monsters of sci-fi films? How do you break news of alien discoveries to the world without creating widespread pandemonium?"
If you ask Davies, the group may be able to figure all that out sooner than most of us think -- in his speech today, Davies told the scientists that there's a good chance aliens are already among us.
No, Davies is not some crackpot who fell victim to Arizona's meth epidemic, nor is he insane -- he's not talking about little green men hiding among us circa-Will Smith's Men in Black. He's talking about the possibility of microbial alien life forms that we haven't discovered yet.
Davies tells the Associated Press that some of the microbes could be "right under or noses -- or even in our noses" and could be made up of elements not yet known in the human world.
"How do we know all life on earth descended from a single origin?" he tells the society, which serves as Britain's Academy of Sciences. "We've just scratched the surface of the microbial world."
Sorry folks, no ray-guns or spaceships yet -- if it's any consolation, though, your boogers may be able to "phone home."
