If aliens exist, what would they think of us?

For generations, people have wondered: What would alien life on another planet be like? But we rarely ask the opposite: What do they think of us?

This is a question that may produce some uncomfortable answers if you’re an earthling.

“If I were to look at the world from afar, I would be pretty disappointed,” says theoretical physicist Avi Loeb. “Most of our investments are in dealing with conflict to prevent other people from killing us or from us killing others. Look at the Ukrainian war over a small piece of land. That’s not a sign of intelligence.”

The debate over whether there are little green men or UFOs among us escalated further in February, when former President Barack Obama responded to a podcaster’s question by saying that aliens are “real” but that he “hasn’t seen them” and that they “are not being held at Area 51.” Later President Donald Trump announced on social media He said he directed the release of government files due to “tremendous interest.”

As the United States moves towards the Moon on Wednesday, interest in UFOs is also increasing. NASA’s Artemis II mission. The four astronauts on board will take a tour around the moon before returning to Earth.

In a world torn apart by war, civil unrest, climate change, and divisiveness, it is easy to wonder what newcomers to Planet Earth will bring to us and our struggles. Whatever the case, a majority of Americans echo the sentiment of the tagline in “The X-Files”: “The truth is out there.”

2021 survey A study conducted by the Pew Research Center showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans say 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 were “definitely” or “probably” evidence of intelligent life outside Earth.

“We don’t want to think that this is the only place in this extraordinary and incredibly vast universe where life, intelligence, and even technology have emerged,” says Bill Diamond, president and chief executive of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

“It’s kind of like, ‘We don’t want to be alone’ about people.”

There’s something up there. But what?

Americans became fascinated with the idea of ​​life outside this planet after the recovery of wreckage near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. The military initially said the material was from a flying disk, but reversed course and told the public it came from a weather balloon.

Hollywood ran with it. Flying saucers, little green men, and eventually humanoid gray aliens became part of popular culture. In fact, April 5 is celebrated as “First Contact Day” every year throughout the iconic “Star Trek” franchise to mark 2063, the date in the “Trek” canon when humanity first came into contact with the Vulcans.

Much of popular culture suggests that any alien could be aggressive. Priscilla Wald, who teaches science fiction at Duke University, has a theory about why.

“It seems to me that this is a reflection of who we are, that the way we treat each other we project onto aliens,” Wald says. “So the aliens are coming down, they want to conquer us, they’re using violence. Who does this look like? It looks like us.”

in 2024 Pentagon published hundreds of reports However, unidentified and unexplained weather phenomena review gave no indication that their origins were extraterrestrial.

Debbie Dmytro saw things in the sky over Michigan’s southern Oakland County on two separate occasions. The greenish object Dmytro said he saw in the sky over Royal Oak, Michigan, on March 1 looked neither like a plane nor a helicopter. Dmytro, a 56-year-old medical professional, agrees that it could be some type of commercial or delivery drone.

What they saw in the same general area north of Detroit in 2023 is not so easily explained.

“Four yellow lights, yellowish gold lights, and they were all flying very, very low,” Dmytro recalls. He says the lights were about 100 feet up at the closest point.

“I’ve never seen anything fly so low, so noiselessly and so uniformly,” he says. “Something man-made? Something non-man-made? Who knows?”

Who really knows? UFOs, a term used for unidentified flying objects, have been replaced in recent years by UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena or unidentified anomalous events).

“Certainly, there are things like UAPs and UFOs,” says Diamond, whose SETI – Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence – aims to discover, investigate and understand the nature of life and intelligence in the universe.

“People observe things in the sky that they cannot immediately identify or recognize as human engineering, such as airplanes, drones, or helicopters, or animals, such as birds, and therefore they do not know what they are,” Diamond says.

time of truth

Like many people, Dmytro wants to know what the government knows. “I think there’s more information out there. I’m open to learning more,” he says. “I’m open-minded. It’s always about scientific evidence.”

Retired Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet says the evidence clearly shows UAP movement in airspace and oceans.

“The non-human intelligence that operates or controls them is absolutely real,” says Gallaudet. “We saved the crashed ship. We don’t know if its origins are extraterrestrial.”

Gallaudet worked as acting administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He attended a 2024 congressional hearing on UAP disclosure and said Trump’s promised release of government files is something people are interested in. He just hopes the president follows through.

There are billions of galaxies in the universe, and each has billions of stars, so the likelihood of life developing elsewhere is quite high, according to University of Michigan Astronomy Professor Edwin Bergin, who teaches looking for life elsewhere. He believes that despite humanity’s tendency to create chaos, if intelligent beings travel great distances to reach Earth, they will make themselves known.

“I thought they would look at us like we were crazy… but they would show up,” he says. “I mean, why would he come here if you’re not going to sit and observe?”

Loeb, director of the Harvard Institute for Theory and Computation and head of the university’s Galileo Project, the Systematic Search for Scientific Evidence for Extraterrestrial Technological Artifacts, believes in the possible existence of extraterrestrials.

“They might be laughing at us,” he says. “They might be watching us to make sure we won’t become predators, that we won’t be dangerous to them.”

In the interest of national security

According to Diamond, much of the government’s secrecy about UFOs and UAP is tied to national security concerns.

“We have pretty advanced satellite and ground-based technologies aimed at objects in the sky or on aircraft for a variety of purposes, mostly for national security and defense,” Diamond says. “Sometimes these pick up objects. The technology behind it is sensitive and protected.”

Gallaudet, who spent 32 years in the Navy and watched the classified UAP video, says government data, including a “treasure trove” of UAP video that the Navy is eyeing, should be shared with scientists for research and a better understanding of the objects’ properties.

“When you look at these things in our airspace that almost caused collisions with our planes, it’s a really valid concern,” he says. “We’re not sure what they are and what they plan to do with their interactions with humanity. This may or may not be a national security threat.”

“When did ignorance become a good national strategy?” Gallaudet asks. “I think it’s in our best interest to seek the truth, whether it’s scary, harmful, or a combination of these.”

Diamond, meanwhile, doesn’t think any “real alien encounters can be kept secret.”

“If any civilization has mastered interstellar travel, it has technology and capabilities beyond our wildest understanding,” he says. “If they want to interact they will, if they don’t they won’t. If they want to be seen they will, if they don’t they won’t!”