Forget little green men. Aliens may look like giant jellyfish with orange bottoms, a leading space scientist has claimed.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock, a satellite expert and government adviser, said it is likely that there is extra-terrestrial life – it is just more alien than you’d imagine.

Rather than being the little green men so beloved of Hollywood directors, they may look like football-field sized jellyfish, complete with onion-shaped appendages and an orange underbelly or bottom.

Generated from silicon, rather than the carbon that is the basis of life as we know it, the creatures are able to live off light absorbed through their ‘skin’ and chemicals sucked in through their giant mouths.