As of the 1st January 2009 there have been 483,529 valid survey entries. A big thank you for this data, the following contains the preliminary statistics for the answers given to each question, our comments and our own answers to the questions. We would be interested to read any comments you may have on the results of the survey.

Question 1 - Enter Gender (choice of Male or Female)

Answer - Male (84%) and Female (16%)

Our Comments: We always knew that the majority of our readers were male, however we were shocked at the very low number of females taking part in the survey. It could be that perhaps the girls were a little more reluctant to complete the survey than the boys. If you have any ideas why the figures are so heavily skewed then please let us know.

Question 2 - Please enter age range

Answer - 0-16 (26%), 17-25 (16%), 26-35 (20%), 35-45 (22%), 46-55 (6%), 56-65 (1%), 66-75 (5%), 76-85 (2%), >85 (2%)

Our Comments: This seems to be the age range that we expected from the site survey. Nothing unusual here.

Question 3 - Select your country from the dropdown list

Answer - The folks that entered the USA (61%) and the UK (33%) made up the majority of the entries. The remaining 6% were scattered reasonably evenly.

Our Comments: We were surprised that the USA and UK dominated so heavily.

Question 4 - Do you think intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe?

Answer - Yes (98%) and No (2%)

Our Comments: We agree with the majority. There are billions of suns like ours just in our own milky way galaxy and there are billions of galaxies in the universe. The odds that there is some form of intelligent life somewhere must be pretty good.

Question 5 - Do you think that man will one day find another planet with life

Answer - Yes (92%) and No (8%)

Our Comments: We agree with the majority that man will one day find intelligent life elsewhere. However, we would imagine this would be as a result of the current planet finding research. We are already finding more and more planets and we can determine whether a planet has an oxygen containing atmosphere as part of that process. We do not believe that man will ever visit a planet with intelligent life, but we do think man will find it.

Question 6 - Do you think Aliens have ever visited Earth?

Answer - Yes (37%) and No (63%)

Our Comments: We do not believe Aliens have ever visited Earth, nor do we believe that they ever will. It is true that there could be planets out there with intelligent life capable of interstellar travel but the universe is so huge and we are so small that it is more than likely we'll be totally overlooked. It is true that we have been beaming signals (television etc) out to space, but this has only been for a relatively short time. We think it is more likely that if an alien species were to visit Earth everyone would be aware of it.

Question 7 - Have you ever seen a UFO or believe you've been abducted?

Answer - Yes (31%) and No (69%)

Our Comments: We were stunned at this result, bearing in mind our thoughts on question 6 above, we therefore do not believe in UFOs and we do believe alien abduction stories are just that, stories. If a reader really does believe that they were abducted we would be very interested in hearing from you.

Question 8 - Do you believe man will develop the technology for space exploration?

Answer - Yes (92%) and No (8%)

Our Comments: This question was not ideally worded. In essence man has already developed technology for space exploration, e.g. Mars Express, Voyager etc. What we meant in the question is "do you believe man will develop spaceships like Star Trek and explore the universe?" Unfortunately the results for this question are rather ambiguous. In answer to the question we meant to set, we do not believe man will ever develop the technology to build space ships for the reasons given in question 9 below.

Question 9 - Bearing in mind that man has been around as an intelligent species for 100,000 years, do you believe that man will survive for another 100,000 years or will humans become extinct either through self-destruction or natural disasters?

Answer - Man will survive (44%) and Man will not survive (56%)

Our Comments: We believe that man will survive as a species but that man's technology base will not survive. Over a long duration of time, events that are highly improbable start to become statistically relevant. For example, there is a huge super volcano that encompasses the entire area of Yellowstone National Park. It will erupt one day and destroy a vast area of the USA and throw the rest of the world into the next ice age. Our technology base will collapse along with our economic infrastructure and result in wide-scale loss of life, but it has happened before and man as a species survived. The same argument could equally apply to large asteroids.

Question 10 - Time Travel is theoretically possible, do you believe that man will one day construct a time machine?

Answer - Yes (75%) and No (25%)

Our Comments: We believe the answer to this is "No". Man has already performed experiments that show the nature of time dilation but that is a long way off from building a time travelling machine like the TARDIS from Dr Who. We do not believe (as we stated in question 9 above) that man will be around as a technologically advanced species long enough to develop a machine capable of time travel. That is not to say that one could not be built by an alien civilisation that has been technologically advanced for millions of years rather than our 100 years.

Question 11 - Do you believe that man is still evolving and that assuming survives for millions of years, he will ultimately look totally different to how he looks now?

Answer - Yes (28%) and No (72%) although if you remove votes cast by the USA the figures change to Yes (55%) and No (45%)

Our Comments: We believe in evolution and that the process of evolution is always continuing. Therefore, we must believe that man is continuing to evolve and that over a long period of time man will look totally different to how he looks now. We were particularly interested in whether the evolution vs. creationism (or intelligent design, it's the same thing) debates in the USA would influence the view of our American friends. The results show that they do.

Question 12 - Do you believe man will develop an anti-gravity device?

Answer - Yes (48%) and No (52%)

Our Comments: As stated in question 9, we do not believe man will maintain a technologically advanced civilisation and so will not be able to develop the level of technology to build an anti-gravity device, however that is not to say that it couldn't be done (haven't a clue how), if you have an idea let us know.

Question 13 - Do you believe that man will develop the technology commonly seen in Science Fiction?

Answer - Yes (78%) and No (22%)

Our Comments: As stated in question 9, we do not believe man will maintain a technologically advanced civilisation and so will not be able to develop the level of technology commonly seen in Science Fiction.

Question 14 - Are you a scientist or hope to become one?

Answer - Professional Scientist (11%), hope to be a scientist (36%), would love to be a scientist but can't (32%) and no thanks (21%)

Our Comments: A good spread, but it would be even more interesting to link this with the age ranges (we will do this). On the whole it's great news that so many people were interested in becoming scientists.

Question 15 - What do you think of our site?

Answer - Fantastic (71%),  Pretty Good (23%), OK I Suppose (2%), Didn't really like it (1%), Awful (1%) and No Comment (12%)

Our Comments: Thank you.