Contacting aliens? Don't even think about it, warns Stephen Hawking!

London: In a new online film, renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking has warned against revealing our presence to aliens.

Hawking, who has continuously assured the world of extra terriestrial presence has stated that our first contact from an advanced civilization could be equivalent to when Native Americans first encountered Christopher Columbus and things "didn't turn out so well."

The film, "Stephen Hawking's Favourite Places", takes viewers on an intriguing journey of five significant locations across the cosmos, on his spacecraft – the SS Hawking.

In the film, Hawking performs a hypothetical flyby of Gliese 832c, a potentially habitable exoplanet located 16 light years away.

"One day we might receive a signal from a planet like Gliese 832c, but we should be wary of answering back," he said.

Hawking has further warned that the aliens will be enormously powerful and may see us the way we see bacteria.

"As I grow older I am more convinced than ever that we are not alone. After a lifetime of wondering, I am helping to lead a new global effort to find out," he was quoted as saying by 'The Guardian'.

This is not the first time Stephen Hawking has been so outspoken against the existence of aliens civilization.

Launching the Breakthrough Listen project, which will scan the nearest million stars for signs of life, last year Hawking had suggested that any civilization reading our messages could be billions of years ahead of humans.

"The Breakthrough Listen project will scan the nearest million stars for signs of life, but I know just the place to start looking," he said, in the film that appeared on the online platform CuriosityStream.

(With PTI inputs)