There is hardly any person who on gazing at the silent void of the Cosmos has not sensed a feeling of transience and solitude. Who are we and are we alone? Although there has been no clear-cut answer to this question yet, many people support the idea that we, the earthlings, are definitely not the only ones in the Universe. Recently, the Daily Telegraph newspaper has published the 10 top most famous persons in the world who believe in extraterrestrial life. Among the top 10 believers are legendary physicist and cosmologist Prof. Stephen Hawking, Astronomer Royal Lord Martin Rees, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, as well as Bulgarian astrophysicist Lachezar Filipov.

"Aliens are currently all around us, and are watching us all the time," claims Prof. Filipov, member of the International Astronautical Federation. The scientist also says that our civilization is still not ready to establish direct contact with them.

© Photo: personal archive

Mr Filipov was head of the programme for the spaceflight of Bulgaria’s second cosmonaut in 1988. At the moment he researches black holes and the creation of the universe. Being part of numerous international space exploration projects he knows in person space luminaries, such as Stephen Hawking, Astronomer Royal Lord Martin Rees, Carl Sagan, etc. Furthermore, Lachezar Filipov is among the few prominent Bulgarians who openly admit to believing in UFOs, a topic that has been of keen interest to him for years. According to him, sooner or later every astrophysicist is confronted with the question of how life came to being and if there are extraterrestrial forms in outer space. To prove his point on the existence of aliens he gives as an example the declassification of some of the archives of NASA, French CNES and Japanese NASDA, which say that UFOs around the world are no figment of mass hallucination. “Undoubtedly, many of them can be explained with various natural phenomena. However, science has not yet found an explanation for 10% of the cases regarding UFOs. Indeed, it is these cases that leave a serious vacuum in our knowledge about the world and pose a series of questions to us”, Prof. Filipov said for Radio Bulgaria. Not long ago NASA scientists discovered that at least 500 million planets in our galaxy alone could shelter a form of extraterrestrial life, which has given a new boost to UFO research. “It is unreasonable and egoistic to claim that we are the only ones provided that the Universe is full of flying biological molecules”, Mr Filipov reckons. In his view, the problem is that we cannot push the limits of our human idea about life and extraterrestrial intelligence, thus thinking of aliens as having purely anthropological traits. For example, the American astronauts who have stepped on the Moon have told us about an unexplained mental presence there. Perhaps, there are other unaccountable forms of energy out there. If aliens would be around us and would be watching us, as Mr Filipov claims, how had they managed to overcome the inconceivably vast space to get to the Earth?

“There seems to be unknown ways of transportation in the Universe”, Mr Filipov explains. “Contemporary physics limits the knowledge of humankind by claiming that 300.000 km/s (the speed of light) is the only possible speed of travel. This comes to show that if we lived for 300 years we would hardly go far, having in mind the vastness of our galaxy. Yet, if an extraterrestrial civilization knows of any means of transportation across the Universe, there are most probably other mechanisms, too. For instance, that civilization can use black holes or enormous tunnels in space and time through which it can travel as if by metro, diving into one part of the Universe and emerging into another! Imagine a piece of Dutch cheese; perhaps the ways to travel across the Universe are quite simple!”, Lachezar Filipov says in conclusion.
The Bulgarian astrophysicist reckons that our civilization with all its conflicts, problems and weaknesses is still not ready to meet with aliens. Are the little green men really watching us? When will they establish contact with us? Are they friendly? The truth is out there!

English version: Vyara Popova