Aliens exist? Prove it

At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio there is, it is rumoured, a secret underground room where a crashed alien spacecraft is kept. It’s warm to the touch, buzzing with a strange energy, an indication of technology light years ahead of ours. Meanwhile, over at Groom Lake Air Force Base in Nevada, otherwise known as Area 51, there are apparently more alien spaceships, some intact, as well as the preserved bodies of alien pilots.

Is it true? Well, a recent survey indicated that half of the US population believed their government was covering up evidence of aliens. As someone involved in the scientific search for life in space, however, I put that down to poor journalism, a lack of critical thought and shallow scientific knowledge.

I would love to believe we are being visited by life born under the light of a different star and which took an adjacent evolutionary path before setting off to explore the cosmos. What would they be like – their biology, history, philosophy, art and culture, and of course their fabulous scientific discoveries and technology that enabled them to traverse the galaxy to Earth? Sadly, however, the evidence is weak, to put it mildly.

The past few years have seen unprecedented interest in alien visitation. It began in 2017 with an article in the New York Times whose authors included a fervent UFO advocate and which revealed the existence of a secret Pentagon department set up to evaluate the alien threat. The publication released three videos shot by US navy pilots showing Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) performing manoeuvres that some said defied the laws of physics. President Barack Obama weighed in, telling news network CBS: ‘What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are, we can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory.