Around a fifth of Brits believe that extraterrestrials have visited Earth, and an estimated 7% think they have seen a UFO. In the US, the figures are even higher and rising: the number of people who believe that UFO sightings are likely evidence of extraterrestrial life has risen from 20% in 1996 to 34% in 2022. Around 24% of Americans say they have seen a UFO. New Paper of Proceedings of the International Astronomical UnionDr Tony Milligan of King’s College London argues that belief in alien visitors is no longer an eccentricity but a widespread societal problem.
The idea that aliens may have visited Earth is becoming more and more popular. Image by Fernando Ribas.
This belief has now grown to the point that politicians, at least in the United States, feel they must respond.
The Department of Defense’s alleged disclosure of information about UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) has attracted bipartisan attention across the country.
Many of them draw on familiar anti-elitist tropes that both parties are happy to employ, such as the idea that a cabal of military and private commercial interests is hiding the deeper truth about alien visitation.
The truth is thought to involve sightings, abductions, and the reverse engineering of alien technology.
People who believe in a cover-up are even more numerous than those who believe in alien visitations: A 2019 Gallup Poll found that a staggering 68% of Americans believe the U.S. government knows more about UFOs than it is releasing.
This political bias has been decades in the making: Jimmy Carter promised to release the documents during his 1976 presidential campaign, several years after his own UFO sightings were reported. As with many other sightings, the simplest explanation is that he saw Venus.
… (remaining content truncated for brevity) …
Source: www.sci.news
