COMMENT: We can't be alone in the universe

WHEN I was sitting on my back deck the other night watching the (nearly) full moon rising over St Helena ridge my gaze went to the heavens.

WHEN I was sitting on my back deck the other night watching the (nearly) full moon rising over St Helena ridge my gaze went to the heavens.

Surely, I thought, as I stared at the big moon, we can't be the only ones 'out there'.

I've never seen a UFO or, to the best of my knowledge, been kidnapped by aliens, but I often wonder whether there is life in a galaxy far, far away.

The closest encounter I have had with an alien is an ET stuffed toy my youngest daughter sleeps with every night.

Now, I don't mean to get all Star Trek on you, but a couple of days later I came across a story we've written about UFOs.

It seems that freedom of information requests lodged by two Melbourne scientists have revealed UFOs may be more common in Australian skies than was first thought.

Paul Dean and Keith Basterfield were so interested by an Australian Transport Safety Bureau ATSB report into an incident near Perth, on March 19 last year, they lodged a FOI request with Air Services Australia asking for information on recent cases of unexplained objects in our skies.

And the results stunned them as there had been 13 incidents in the past seven years.

Is it too much to think we are not alone in this universe?

Probably, if the reports to the ATSB are anything to go by.

In September 2012 flight "TGW581 reported a red cylindrical object passing the aircraft in the opposite direction when climbing through FL200 approximately 20nm miles south of Sydney."

I'll leave the UFO theories to someone else.