If aliens exist, what would they think of us?
For generations, human beings have wondered: what would extraterrestrial life from another planet look like? But we rarely ask the opposite: what would they think of us?
This is a question that can produce some uncomfortable answers if you’re an earthling.
“If I looked at Earth from afar, I would be pretty disappointed,” says theoretical physicist Avi Loeb. “Most of our investments are in conflict to prevent other people from killing us or us from killing other people. Look at the war in Ukraine over a little piece of territory. That’s not a sign of intelligence.”
The debate over whether there are little green men or UFOs among us intensified in February when former President Barack Obama, responding to a podcaster’s question, said aliens were “real” but that he “hadn’t seen them” and “they’re not kept at Area 51.” President Donald Trump later announced on social media that he was ordering the release of government records due to “tremendous interest.”
Interest in UFOs is also growing as the United States heads to the Moon again with Wednesday’s launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission. The four astronauts on board will fly past the Moon before returning to Earth.
In a world torn apart by war, civil unrest, climate change and division, it’s easy to wonder what new arrivals to planet Earth might think of us and our struggles. Regardless, a large majority of Americans share the sentiment of “The X-Files” slogan: “The truth is out there.”
A 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center showed that 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 the military are “definitely” or “probably” evidence of intelligent life outside Earth.
“We don’t want to think that this is the only place in this extraordinarily and incomprehensibly vast universe where life, intelligence and even technology emerged,” says Bill Diamond, president and CEO of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.
“It kind of says about humans: ‘We don’t want to be alone.'”
There’s something up there. But what?
Americans became fascinated with the idea of life outside this planet after debris was recovered in 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico. The military initially said the material came from a flying disk, only to reverse course and tell the public it was a weather balloon.
Hollywood ran with it. Flying saucers, little green men, and eventually gray humanoid aliens became part of popular culture. April 5 is even celebrated annually in the iconic “Star Trek” franchise as “First Contact Day” to mark the date in 2063 that humanity, in the “Trek” canon, first made contact with the Vulcans.
Much popular culture suggests that any alien could be aggressive. Priscilla Wald, who teaches science fiction at Duke University, has a theory as to why.
“It seems to me that it’s a reflection on who we are, the fact that we project onto the aliens the way we treat each other,” says Wald. “So the aliens are coming down, they want to conquer us, they’re violent. Who does that look like? That looks like us.”
In 2024, the Pentagon released hundreds of reports of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena. However, this examination gave no indication that their origins were extraterrestrial.
Twice, Debbie Dmytro saw things in the sky over southern Oakland County, Michigan. The greenish object that Dmytro said he saw on March 1 in the sky over Royal Oak, Michigan, looked neither like a plane nor a helicopter. Dmytro, a 56-year-old medical professional, agrees it could be some sort of commercial or delivery drone.
What she saw in 2023 in the same area north of Detroit is not so easily explained.
“Four yellow lights, yellowish-gold lights and they were all flying very, very low,” Dmytro recalled. She said the lights were about 100 feet high at their closest point.
“I’ve never seen anything so low, without any noise and flying with complete uniformity,” she said. “Is it something man-made? Is it something not man-made? Who knows?”
Who really knows? UFOs, the term for unidentified flying objects, have given way in recent years to UAPs – 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, research 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 human engineering, like planes or drones or helicopters, or animals, like birds, and therefore they don’t know what they are,” Diamond says.
It’s time for the truth
Like so many others, Dmytro wants to know what the government knows. “I think there’s more information available. I’m open to learning more,” she says. “I have an open mind. It’s always about scientific evidence.”
Retired Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet says the evidence clearly shows UAPs moving through airspace and oceans.
“The non-human intelligence that exploits or controls them is absolutely real,” says Gallaudet. “We have recovered some crashed craft. We don’t know if they are of extraterrestrial origin.”
Gallaudet worked as acting administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He participated in a 2024 congressional hearing on UAP disclosure and said Trump’s promised release of government records is something people care about. He just hopes the president follows through.
There are billions of galaxies in the universe and each of them has billions of stars. The likelihood of life developing elsewhere is therefore quite high, according to University of Michigan astronomy professor Edwin Bergin, who teaches the search for life elsewhere. He believes that if intelligent beings traveled great distances to reach Earth, they would make themselves known – despite humanity’s penchant for creating chaos.
“I thought they would look at us like we were crazy…but they would come out,” he says. “I mean, why else come here, unless you want to sit and observe.”
Loeb, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at Harvard and leader 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 said. “Maybe they’re watching us… to make sure we don’t become predators, that we don’t become dangerous to them.”
In the interest of national security
Much of the government secrecy around UFOs and UAPs has to do with national security concerns, according to Diamond.
“We have some pretty advanced technologies, satellite and ground, that serve a variety of purposes, primarily national security and defense, and that point to the sky or objects on board aircraft,” Diamond says. “Sometimes these pick up objects. The technology behind this is sensitive and protected.”
Government data, including a “treasure trove” of UAP videos that the Navy is sitting on, should be shared with scientists for research and better understanding of the objects’ characteristics, says Gallaudet, who spent 32 years in the Navy and viewed classified UAP videos.
“When you look at these things in our airspace, where there are near-misses with our aircraft, it’s a real and valid concern,” he said. “We’re just not sure what they are and what they intend to do with their interaction with humanity. It may or may not pose a threat to national security.”
“When has ignorance ever been a good national strategy?” » asks Gallaudet. “Whether it’s scary, harmful or not, or a mix of things, I think seeking the truth is in our best interest.”
Meanwhile, Diamond doesn’t think a “real alien encounter can be kept secret.”
“If a civilization masters interstellar travel, it has technology and capabilities that are 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 be seen, and if they don’t, they won’t be seen!”
