A UFO expert has warned that Elon Musk could interfere with aliens trying to make first contact if he axes anonymous bots from Twitter.
Nick Pope, who used to work as a Government advisor on the threat of UFOs, said the Tesla chief could muzzle Martians trying to send humanity messages via indirect means.
Elon, who bought the social media platform for a mind-boggling £35bn, has spoken of "defeating spam bots" and said he would make efforts to block them from Twitter.
But Nick believes these bots are just the sort of tools that aliens could use to contact us, and by getting rid of them Elon may block first contact.
What do you think about Nick's claims? Let us know in the comments...
Nick, Britain’s top space boffin, said: "If Earth is being visited or monitored by aliens, they'll know the importance humans attach to the internet and social media.
"They'll already have been paying close attention to Elon Musk, because he's such a key player in the space program, so now that he's bought Twitter, they'll be looking at him even more closely.
"They may even think he's Earth's supreme leader - after all, Twitter has such power, it even banned a former President of the United States!
"And it's worth more than the entire GDP of many entire countries!
"This raises another point: our efforts to communicate with aliens consist of listening for radio signals from other civilizations, sometimes beaming out messages ourselves, and sending out some space probes."
However, he claims humans should look closer to home for signs of messages from little green men.
He added: "Perhaps we need to think outside the box.
"If aliens wanted to communicate, maybe they'd use the form of communication that most people on the planet use every day, i.e. email, or maybe a Tweet.
"There are plenty of Twitter accounts purporting to come from aliens - either from some sort of Galactic Federation, or from people claiming to be channelling telepathic messages from extraterrestrials.
"Most people assume these are the work of fantasists, or that they're the sort of spoof accounts that Elon Musk has said he'll crack down on, but what if one of them was the real deal?
"How would we know?
"Might we miss out on first contact just because an email from an alien went into someone's spam folder, or because we mistakenly think someone's pulling our leg on Twitter?
"In these days of big data, AI and deep learning, perhaps we should be trawling the internet and social media sites for anything that might be a real message from an alien.
"To get our attention, a genuine alien message would probably include the solution to a major unsolved problem in mathematics, physics or computer science - something advanced, but verifiable.
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"It would be a sort of extraterrestrial calling card, and if it's on Twitter, Elon Musk is now perfectly placed to find it."
On April 21, days before his successful buyout, Musk tweeted: "If our Twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!
"And authenticate all real humans."
Musk’s SpaceX initiative put the first all-private astronaut team on the International Space Station and they safely landed back on Earth on Monday (Apr 25).
He has a whopping 86.1 billion followers on the platform.
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