In our quest to find alien life somewhere out there in the universe, it may be dark matter and dark energy that is preventing us from finding it, a fascinating new study claims. Our limited understanding of dark matter and energy that may be blinding us to signals sent out by intelligent alien life, which scientists say good possibly exist in dimensions that we cannot even perceive.

When we think of aliens today, we tend to think of them as operating in our plane of existence, but what we might not realize is that we may be viewing the universe with some very limited lenses. With dark matter and energy making up 95 percent of the known universe, and with us understanding so little about it, we must be open to the possibility that we see very little of what actually goes on in the universe.

And scientists used a very unique way to determine this. In an experiment with 137 people, they asked participants to identify aerial photographs depicting structures and separate them fromt hose with natural elements like mountains and rivers. In one of the images, they threw in a tiny character who was disguised as a gorilla, just to see if anyone would see it. The results were very illustrative of our how our brains work, as individuals who were more intuitive were more likely to spot it than those who were rational and methodical.

“When we think of other intelligent beings, we tend to see them from our perceptive and conscience sieve; however we are limited by our sui generis vision of the world, and it’s hard for us to admit it,” said neuropsychologist Gabriel de la Torre of the University of Cádiz (Spain) in a statement. “What we are trying to do with this differentiation is to contemplate other possibilities – he says-, for example, beings of dimensions that our mind cannot grasp; or intelligences based on dark matter or energy forms, which make up almost 95% of the universe and which we are only beginning to glimpse. There is even the possibility that other universes exist, as the texts of Stephen Hawking and other scientists indicate.”