Host: BBC Banned Alien Quest

Talk about out of this world. BBC host and physicist Brian Cox on Wednesday tried to walk back claims that the BBC had told him he couldn’t try to contact life on Mars because it violated its health and safety guidelines. On a radio interview on BBC6 Music on Tuesday, Cox said that BBC bosses had told him not to point a telescope at a newly discovered planet on his hit show Stargazing Live because finding an “alien civilization” would be in violation of the corporation’s guidelines. After the story took off in Britain, Cox tried to walk back the claims, saying that they have talked about aliens on air, and that it’s “not really news.”