Astrobiologist: 'Hyper-Advanced Aliens' Might Be Among Us

Alien beings could be hiding among us, according to astrobiologist Caleb Scharf.

In a video presentation for Business Insider's "Tech Insider," the director of the Columbia Astrobiology Center at Columbia University and author of "The Copernicus Complex" concedes it is impossible to know what "hyper-advanced aliens" might look like.

"But we may be able to extrapolate from our own case," he suggested, noting humans now live in a time where "increasingly we rely on . . . sophisticated machines."

Artificial intelligence and other advanced technology "may be able to become sophisticated enough" to decode what we know as life and "rebuild it in some other way."

Scharf said it is his "hunch . . . if there are truly advanced species out there in the universe, they've transitioned away from biology as we understand it into something else, something that gives them more freedom of operation."

And these beings could be so sophisticated and advanced "we would never recognize them as being of life because they might be embedded in the natural world" and "hidden away" – including as "different states of matter of somehow uploaded in electro radiation flooding through the universe."

"The sky's the limit for hyper-advanced aliens," he declared.

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