Brian Cox says humans won't make contact with aliens - and gives a very specific reason why not

The reason humans haven't been able to contact aliens yet is that they're already extinct - at least according to Professor Brian Cox.

The Wonders of the Universe presenter explained that scientific advancements often outpace the regulations controlling them - leading to destruction.

"It may be that the growth of science and engineering inevitably outstrips the development of political expertise, leading to disaster," he told the Sunday Times .

Worryingly, Brian reckons we're not far off the same fate ourselves.

"We could be approaching that position,” he added.

The idea was first theorised by Enrico Fermi, the physicist who built the first nuclear reactor. In 1950, Fermi wondered why we hadn't met any other aliens yet.

His idea was that even with primitive rockets, aliens could colonise the galaxy in ten million years or so. So where is ET?

“One solution to the Fermi paradox is that it is not possible to run a world that has the power to destroy itself and that needs global collaborative solutions to prevent that,” Cox told the Sunday paper.

So any expectations of meeting an intelligent life form seems in doubt, as it will likely have already destroyed itself.

Perhaps our best chance of finding life elsewhere in the Milky Way is by discovering bacteria or single-celled organisms in one of the galaxy's other oceans.

Both Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus offer the prime candidates. They both are believed to have giant subsurface lakes that could be hosting life.