Are aliens real?

Aliens have been in the news. This past summer, high-profile hearings in both the United States and Mexico have made international news because of their subject matter – the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life that has been visiting Earth. 

While both cases have been debunked as either played-up or outright faked, they have once again caused many to raise questions concerning the world of aliens, UFOs, and government secrets. Just how likely, or even possible, is any of this to be real?

According to NASA, our galaxy alone has at least 100 billion planets. Scientists speculate that there may be as many as two trillion galaxies out there. NASA reports that by the most conservative estimates, our galaxy has about 300 million habitable planets. If we apply the same math to all two trillion galaxies, we can guess that there may be as many as 140 billion planets capable of supporting life. Are we truly one in 140 billion? 

Many alien-believers do not think so, but there is one more major hurdle. While it is likely that alien life in some form exists elsewhere in the universe, intelligent life is much rarer, especially a civilization advanced enough to reach us. It is likely that if an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization existed nearby, we would have detected some sign of them already. Thus, if aliens are visiting us in UFOs, they must be significantly more advanced than us to have mastered deep space travel.

In short, aliens are likely, but little green men in flying saucers are not. They aren’t impossible, however. Many alien conspiracy theories involve the governments of the world knowing about the existence of UFOs and hiding them on purpose. The important question in this case is why? All world governments working together for any purpose seems nearly impossible. Not only are many governments hostile towards one another, but each government in the know about aliens would include thousands of individuals with information about the existence of aliens. More people knowing means more people who could blab about the truth behind alien life. An international conspiracy to hide the existence of aliens would be an extremely difficult and expensive task that must ignore the prejudices between countries that seem to be insurmountable for every other issue.

Most conspiracy theorists claim that governments choose to hide alien life because they believe that it will cause mass panic, but this reason is not strong enough to match the massive effort that the conspiracy would require. As interesting as it would be for the government to have secret alien knowledge, it almost certainly is not true. Conspiracy theorists should not fret, however, because the shadiest of government plots take place right here on Earth.