It’s as humorous as it is stupid. Brian Cox, the British astronomer and presenter of Stargazing Live, wanted to listen to a newly discovered planet live on BBC television. It was a planet that no one had listened to yet. However, Cox writes that he was notified that he was not allowed to do so….
According to Cox:
“The BBC actually said, ‘But you can’t do that because we need to go through the regulations and health and safety and everything in case we discover a signal from an alien civilisation’.”
The point of these regulations are that it was possible that the aliens would swear and curse, and the BBC does not allow that…
Read the entire story here:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/bbc-feared-breach-alien-signal-155210558.html
Addendum: It turned out that the story is a hoax. As Brian comments on Twitter:
As @daraobriain pointed out, we did the "health and safety" aliens story live on air last year as a joke. Not really news!
— Brian Cox (@ProfBrianCox) November 7, 2012
And he further comments:
Actually, what is more interesting is that there are international guidelines for transmitting messages in response to a signal.
— Brian Cox (@ProfBrianCox) November 7, 2012
And yes, that last bit is indeed interesting…
See also this tweet (and the rest of the conversation):
@JonathanHaynes @Glinner Actually not banned. Some comedic license from brian here. We still did it live on-air; and heard nothing, sadly.
— Dara Ó Briain (@daraobriain) November 7, 2012