{"id":74014,"date":"2024-09-03T00:05:50","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T04:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=74014"},"modified":"2024-09-03T07:04:34","modified_gmt":"2024-09-03T11:04:34","slug":"belief-in-alien-visits-to-earth-is-spiralling-out-of-control-heres-why-thats-so-dangerous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/belief-in-alien-visits-to-earth-is-spiralling-out-of-control-heres-why-thats-so-dangerous\/","title":{"rendered":"Belief in alien visits to Earth is spiralling out of control \u2013 here\u2019s why that\u2019s so dangerous"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The idea that aliens may have visited the Earth is becoming increasingly popular. Around a fifth of UK citizens\u00a0believe Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials<\/a>, and an estimated 7% believe that they have seen a UFO.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0figures are even higher<\/a>\u00a0in the US \u2013 and rising. The number of people who believe UFO sightings offer likely proof of alien life\u00a0increased from 20% in 1996 to 34% in 2022<\/a>. Some 24% of Americans say they\u2019ve seen a UFO.<\/p>\n

This belief is slightly paradoxical as we have zero evidence that aliens even exist. What\u2019s more, given the vast distances between star systems, it seems odd we\u2019d only learn about them from a visit. Evidence for aliens is more likely to come from signals from faraway planets.<\/p>\n

In a paper\u00a0accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union<\/a>, I argue that the belief in alien visitors is no longer a quirk, but a widespread societal problem.<\/p>\n

The belief is now rising to the extent that politicians, at least in the US, feel they have to respond. The\u00a0disclosure of information<\/a>\u00a0about claimed Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs<\/a>\u00a0rather than UFOs) from the Pentagon has got a lot of bi-partisan attention in the country.<\/p>\n

Much of it plays upon\u00a0familiar anti-elite tropes<\/a>\u00a0that both parties have been ready to use, such as the idea that the military and a secretive cabal of private commercial interests are keeping the deep truth about alien visitation hidden. That truth is believed to involve sightings, abductions and reverse-engineered alien technology.<\/p>\n

Belief in a cover-up is even higher than belief in alien visitation. In 2019, a\u00a0Gallop poll<\/a>\u00a0found that a staggering 68% of Americans believed that \u201cthe US government knows more about UFOs than it is telling\u201d.<\/p>\n

This political trend has been decades in the making. Jimmy Carter\u00a0promised document disclosure<\/a>\u00a0during his presidential campaign in 1976, several years after his own reported UFO sighting. Like so many other sightings, the simplest explanation is that he saw Venus. (That happens a lot.)<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton\u00a0also suggested she wanted to \u201copen [Pentagon] files as much as I can\u201d<\/a>\u00a0during her presidential campaign against Donald Trump. As seen in the video below, Trump suggested he\u2019d need to \u201cthink about\u201d whether it was possible to declassify the so-called\u00a0Roswell documentation<\/a>\u00a0(relating to the notorious claimed crash of a UFO and the recovery of alien bodies).<\/p>\n