SCIENTIST Brian Cox believes there could be 200 BILLION alien civilisations in the universe.
The British rock star turned physicist made the astonishing claim ahead of a bombshell report by the Pentagon into UFOs.
Cox also believes the unexplained flying objects which have been spotted by pilots could be robot spacecrafts sent to explore our world.
He told the Sunday Mirror: “There have to be other civilisations in the universe. I can’t imagine we are the only one.
“Knowing what we know, it’s conceivable there are one or two civilisations in a galaxy at any one time.”
“There’s certainly one in our galaxy. It’s us.”
Studies suggest there could be anywhere between 200 billion and two TRILLION galaxies along with our own Milky Way in the vast universe.
But Cox, who played keyboard for 90s band D:Ream before becoming a professor, says it is possible the alien visitors may not come in peace.
In a BBC documentary, he said: “We’d all like ET to be real. We’d like ET to arrive. But we don’t want Darth Vader coming down.”
On aliens using robots to visit our Earth, he added: “Why send Battlestar Galactica when you could send something the size of an iPhone?.”
Meanwhile, US officials can’t explain what dozens of recent UFO sightings are but they do not show evidence of alien spacecraft, a sensational Pentagon report will allegedly say.
Sources confirm the vast majority of the 120 sightings made by US Navy personnel over the past 20 years were not American military or other government technology, the New York Times reports.
Those findings – due to be presented to Congress on June 25 – eliminate the possibility that the Navy pilots may have seen some form of secret government aircraft, the Times said.
Officials believe that some of the aerial phenomena could have come from a rival power amid fears that Russia may have been experimenting with hypersonic technology.
If they proved to be Russian aircraft then it would suggest that the country’s research in hypersonic technology had “far outpaced” US military development, officials say.
There has been a renewed interest in UFOs in anticipation of the Pentagon report and since military videos were released showing unidentified flying objects.
Barack Obama also added fuel to the fire when he spoke about aliens on The Late Late Show With James Corden last month.
The former US President said: “What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are.”