Well, the headlines are becoming marginally catchier, if still barely relevant…
One of our regular Nibblers reported to us that they had read somewhere (this is how we source most of our information to be fair) that Professor Brian Cox was prevented from looking through a telescope at a newly discover planet live on air, as the BBC did not have a health and safety policy in place with regard to contact with alien life.
Further investigation revealed that most of the major news organisations had already jumped on this story – as always we are last to the party, this is nearly as embarrassing as that whole apocalypse incident.
Having researched we discovered this report in The Guardian and we learnt that the stories of this incident had been greatly exaggerated, and an off the cuff comment about health and safety seems to have been taken out of context.
From this we learnt:
- Brian Cox used to be a popstar in the band D-Ream
- In the ’90s there was a band called D-Ream, which Brian Cox played keyboard in
- The Jodrell Bank telescope is an audio telescope, which would have allowed them to listen to the planet
- The Planet is called Threapleton Holmes B
- The BBC and the UN do not have policies in place with regard to extraterrestrials, but apparently the Vatican do…
Cox’s co-host Dara O Briain tweeted:
Dara O Briain @daraobriain Funny to watch story grow about how BBC “banned” us talking to aliens, when actually we did it live on-air during Star-gazing last January
Issues that we think should be addressed above health and safety when eves dropping on a alien world are:
- Should we not respect the alien’s privacy?
- Should first contact not be more open?
- What if they don’t speak English? It would ruin the whole program as no-one enjoys subtitles…
- How would the distance effect the HD picture quality?
As always we would love to hear your thoughts.
After learning that we aren’t under imminent threat of invasion we quickly lost interest in this story. We hope there is a lesson in this, Nibblers: don’t listen to rumours, if it isn’t covered in Newsnibbles it’s probably because we don’t care about it.
We did ask the fans if they were at all worried about alien invasion. Their responses are below…
