Humanity often ponders the nature of alien life, but rarely considers the inverse: what would extraterrestrials think of us?
For theoretical physicist Avi Loeb, the answer is bleak. “If I were looking at Earth from a distance, I would be pretty disappointed,” he stated, citing global conflicts as a sign of limited intelligence. “Most of our investing is dealing with conflicts to prevent other people from killing us or us killing others. Look at the Ukraine war over a little bit of territory. That is not a sign of intelligence.”
Interest in unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) surged in February when Barack Obama stated aliens are “real,” though he clarified he “hasn’t seen them” and “they’re not being kept at Area 51.”
Donald Trump later announced on social media his directive to release government files due to “tremendous interest.”
This renewed fascination with cosmic neighbours coincides with NASA’s Artemis II mission, sending four astronauts on a moon fly-around before their return to Earth.
In a world riven by war, civil unrest, climate change and divisiveness, it’s easy to wonder what newcomers to Planet Earth might make of us and our struggles. Whatever the case, well over a majority of Americans echo the sentiment of the slogan from “The X-Files”: “The truth is out there.”
A 2021 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center showed about two-thirds of Americans said their best guess is that intelligent life exists on other planets. About half of U.S. adults said UFOs reported by people in the military are “definitely” or “probably” evidence of intelligent life outside Earth.
“We don’t want to think this is the only place in this extraordinarily and incomprehensibly large universe where life and intelligence and even technology have emerged,” says Bill Diamond, president and chief executive of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.
“It sort of says about humans, ’We don’t want to be alone.'”
Americans have been fascinated by the thought of life outside this planet following the recovery of debris in 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico. The military initially said the material was from a flying disc, only to reverse course and tell the public it was from a weather balloon.
Hollywood ran with it. Flying saucers, little green men and eventually humanoid gray aliens became part of popular culture. April 5 even is celebrated annually throughout the iconic “Star Trek” franchise as “First Contact Day” to mark the date in 2063 when humankind, in “Trek” canon, first made contact with Vulcans.
Much in the popular culture suggests any aliens might be aggressive. Priscilla Wald, who teaches about science fiction at Duke University, has a theory as to why.
“It seems to me it’s a reflection on who we are, that we’re projecting onto aliens the way we treat each other,” Wald says. “So the aliens are coming down, they want to conquer us, they’re violent. Who does that sound like? It sounds like us.”
In 2024, the Pentagon released hundreds of reports of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena. However, that review gave no indications that their origins were extraterrestrial.
On two separate occasions, Debbie Dmytro saw things in the sky over Michigan’s southern Oakland County. The greenish object Dmytro says she saw March 1 in the sky over Royal Oak, Michigan, looked like neither plane nor helicopter. Dmytro, a 56-year-old medical professional, acknowledges that it could have been some type of commercial or delivery drone.
What she saw in 2023 in the same general area north of Detroit is not so easily explained.
“Four yellow lights, yellowish golden lights and they were all flying very, very low,” Dmytro remembers. She says the lights were about 100 feet (30 meters) up at their nearest.
“I’ve never seen anything so low without any noise and flying in complete uniformity,” she says. “Is it something man-made? Is it something that’s not manmade? Who knows?”
Who knows indeed? UFOs, the term for unidentified flying objects, has in recent years given way to UAP — unidentified aerial phenomena or unidentified anomalous phenomena.
“Absolutely, there are such things” as UAPs and UFOs, says Diamond, whose SETI — Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — seeks to explore, search and understand the nature of life and intelligence in the universe.
“People observe things in the sky that they can’t immediately identify or recognize as either human engineering such as planes or drones or helicopters, or animals, such as birds, and therefore they don’t know what they are,” Diamond says.
Like so many, Dmytro wants to know what the government knows. “I think there’s more information out there. I’m open to learning more,” she says. “I have an open mind. It’s always about scientific proof.”
Retired Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet says evidence clearly shows there are UAP zipping around the airspace and in the oceans.
“The nonhuman intelligence that operates them or controls them are absolutely real,” Gallaudet says. “We’ve recovered crashed craft. We don’t know if they’re extraterrestrial in origin.”
Gallaudet worked as acting administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He participated in a 2024 congressional hearing on UAP disclosure and says the release of government files promised by Trump is something people find of interest. He just hopes the president follows through.
There are billions of galaxies in the universe and each has billions of stars, so the likelihood life developed elsewhere is fairly high, according to University of Michigan Astronomy Professor Edwin Bergin, who teaches about looking for life elsewhere. He believes that if intelligent beings navigated vast distances to reach Earth they would make themselves known — despite humanity’s penchant for creating chaos.
“I would think that they would look at us like we were crazy … but they would come out,” he says. “I mean, why come here otherwise unless you’re going to sit and observe.”
Loeb, director of the Institute for Theory & Computation at Harvard and head of the university’s Galileo Project for the Systematic Scientific Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Technological Artifacts, believes in the likely existence of extraterrestrials.
“They might be laughing at us,” he says. “They might be watching us … to make sure we will not become predators, that we will not become dangerous to them.”
Much of the government’s secrecy around UFOs and UAP is tied to national security concerns, according to Diamond.
“We have pretty advanced technologies, satellite, ground-based that are for various purposes mostly national security and defense that are pointing at the sky or things on board aircraft,” Diamond says. “Sometimes these pick up objects. The technology behind it is sensitive and protected.”
Government data, including a “trove ” of UAP video the Navy is sitting on, should be shared with scientists for research and a better understanding of the characteristics of the objects, says Gallaudet, who spent 32 years in the Navy and viewed classified UAP video.
“When you look at these things in our airspace having near collisions with our aircraft, that’s a real valid concern,” he says. “We are just not sure of what they are and what they intend to do with their interaction with humanity. That could be a national security threat, or not.”
“When has ignorance ever been a good national strategy?” Gallaudet asks. “Whether it be scary, harmful or not, or a mix, I think seeking the truth is in our best interest.”
Meanwhile, Diamond doesn’t think any “true alien encounter could be kept secret.”
“If any civilization has mastered interstellar travel, they have technology and capabilities beyond our wildest comprehension,” he says. “If they want to interact, they will; if they don’t, they won’t. If they want to be seen, they will be, and if not, they won’t be!”
UFOs, or the notion of them, have been around a long time. Here’s a look at how the various iterations of the subject — from government investigations to sightings to movies and TV — have unfolded since World War II:
1947: First widely reported UFO sighting in US
On June 24, private pilot Kenneth A. Arnold reports seeing nine objects flying near Mount Rainier in Washington state. His was the first widely reported UFO sighting in this country and set off a wave of other reported sightings. On July 2, A ranch foreman checking on sheep finds strange debris spread over a prairie near Roswell, New Mexico. Authorities initially say the material is from a flying disc, but later say it is from a weather balloon.
1948: Official government investigation begins
U.S. Air Force launches Project Sign, an investigation into UFOs; renamed Project Blue Book in 1953. More than 12,600 reported sightings were investigated between 1948 and 1969.
1950: Hollywood jumps in
Release of the spy film “The Flying Saucer.”
1952: Unexplained objects above Washington
Radar operators, pilots and others pick up or see up to a dozen unexplained objects in the sky above Washington, D.C. in July.
1955: Area 51 construction starts
Construction begins for what would become the Area 51 site northwest of Las Vegas as an Air Force facility. Area 51 becomes a hotspot for UFO conspiracy theories. In 2013, the CIA acknowledged the existence of the site.
1957: Widespread Texas sightings
In November, dozens of people in Levelland, Texas, west of Lubbock, report strange lights in the sky that interfered with their vehicles and lights.
1966: The final frontier
In September, “Star Trek” premieres on NBC, launching the most enduring space drama in history.
1969: Air Force says no ETs found
Dec. 17: Air Force says it found no evidence of any UFO that was extraterrestrial in nature or that threatened national security; terminates Project Blue Book.
1977: Spielberg gets in on it
Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” released.
1980: Unexplained lights seen above London
U.S. Air Force personnel stationed in Great Britain report seeing strange lights above Rendlesham Forest, northeast of London, in December. Officers reportedly see a metallic object in the forest after investigating the lights.
1982: The iconic Gen-X alien emerges on film
Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extraterrestrial” is released.
1996: The epic cinematic ‘alien invasion’
Roland Emmerich’s “Independence Day” is released.
1997: UFO reported in Arizona
Residents report seeing lights from a large flying object in the sky over or near Phoenix in March.
2015: ‘Unidentified blob’
U.S. aviators track an unidentified blob which was dubbed “Gofast.” In another video from that year, labeled “Gimbal,” an unexplained object is tracked as it soars high along the clouds, traveling against the wind. “There’s a whole fleet of them,” one naval aviator tells another, though only one indistinct object is shown. “It’s rotating.” The videos are leaked and later released by the Pentagon.
2019: Declassified footage deemed unidentified
Navy acknowledges the three clips of declassified military footage as unidentified aerial phenomena.
2020: UAP team assembled
Pentagon announces a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) Task Force.
2021: Big review of cases produces no definitive ET links
Investigators say in a U.S. government report that they did not find extraterrestrial links in reviewing 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories. They highlighted the need for better data collection.
2022: Governmental action on multiple fronts
Congress holds first hearing in 50 years on UFOs following reports of unexplained aerial phenomena by the military. Lawmakers from both parties say UFOs are a national security concern. NASA announces that it is launching a study of UFOs as part of a new push toward high-risk, high-impact science. The space agency says it’s setting up an independent team to see how much information is publicly available on the matter and how much more is needed. The agency releases its findings in 2023, saying the study of UFOs will require new scientific techniques, including advanced satellites as well as a shift in how unidentified flying objects are perceived. The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) set up in the Pentagon to track reports of unidentified objects in the sky, under water and in space.
2023: Concealment alleged by former Air Force officer
Former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch testifies before a House Oversight subcommittee in July that the U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse-engineers unidentified flying objects. The Pentagon denies it’s concealing any such program.
2024: No evidence indicated
New Pentagon study that examined reported sightings of UFOs over nearly the last century finds no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence. The study from the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office analyzed U.S. government investigations since 1945 of reported sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena. It found no evidence that any of those claims were actually signs of alien life, or that the U.S. government and private companies had reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology and were hiding it.
2026: A flurry of government developments
—Feb. 14: Former U.S. President Barack Obama, answering a question about “are aliens real” on a podcast, says, “They’re real. But I haven’t seen them. And, they’re not being kept in Area 51.” Obama later released this statement on social media: “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
—Feb. 19: President Donald Trump announces on social media that he’s directing the Pentagon and other government agencies to identify and release files related to extraterrestrials and UFOs because of “tremendous interest.” Trump accuses Obama of disclosing “classified information” and tells reporters that he doesn’t know if UFOs are “real or not.”
—March 31: U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna requests in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the government release about four dozen videos related to UAP sightings to an oversight committee task force. “The presence of UAPs in and around the sensitive airspaces of U.S. military installations poses a threat to the security of the armed forces and their readiness,” Luna writes.
