Otago graduate not alien contact

ET - phone Mazlan Othman on extension 8118.

For a fleeting few moments in space and time, the world believed the University of Otago physics PhD graduate was the United Nations' first official point of contact for extra-terrestrials visiting Earth.

Alas, it was not true - at least, not in this universe.

Earlier this week, the Sunday Times in Britain ran a report on the Malaysian astrophysicist who is the head of the United Nations' Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).

The publication claimed she would be officially announced as the UN's ambassador to visiting little green men, at next week's meeting of the Royal Society in Buckinghamshire.

As a result, Prof Othman found herself in the media's tractor beam from all corners of the globe - many taking the report seriously, others more cynically.

However, the agency, a little-known branch of the United Nations General Assembly, based in Vienna, Austria, termed the report "nonsense", and Prof Othman herself has dispelled the myth.

"It sounds really cool, but I have to deny it," she told The Star newspaper in Malaysia.

The revelation has created yet another group of media commentators who have been left disappointed.

One writer said he wished Prof Othman was the UN's first in line of anti-alien defence because he would sleep a lot better knowing the UN "and its fecklessness and obfuscation" stood between us and intergalactic war.

Prof Othman studied physics at the University of Otago in the 1970s after winning a Colombo Plan scholarship.

She was the first woman to gain a PhD in physics from the university and went on to become director of the UNOOSA in Vienna.

She is an accomplished and honoured astrophysicist, being the first in her profession in Malaysia, as well as the head of Malaysia's national planetarium.

Her work as director of the Malaysian National Space Agency also helped launch the country's first astronaut, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, to the International Space Station in 2007.

- john.lewis@odt.co.nz