Is Stephen Hawking having trouble settling on whether we should try to make contact with extraterrestrial life?
The celebrated physicist -- whose life was the subject of the 2014 Oscar-winning movie, "The Theory of Everything" -- has long warned of the dangers of letting aliens know we're here.
In a recent interview with the Spanish news site El Pais, Hawking once again addressed the topic of why we shouldn't try to contact aliens.
"If aliens visit us, the outcome could be much like when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said. "Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach."
But if Hawking, arguably the world's most famous scientist, doesn't sound like someone who wants to reach out and touch ET, he's not against the idea of trying to prove extraterrestrials are out there.
In July, Hawking joined forces with Russian tech billionaire Yuri Milner to launch a 10-year, $100-million hunt to find intelligent life outside of Earth. It's called Breakthrough Initiatives, and has two main components.
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