Just weeks after four astronauts flew to the moon and back, President Donald Trump last week was talking about the impending release of UFO files that might contain new details about extraterrestrial life and unexplained phenomena.
Former President Barack Obama made waves in February when he said on a podcast that aliens are real before clarifying that “the odds are good there’s life out there.” A Hollywood blockbuster centered around aliens, “Disclosure Day,” is just weeks away from its release. And this particular writing comes on Star Wars Day, as in, “May the Fourth be with you” and “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”
All of that to say, there is a buzz in the air, unidentified or otherwise. And if the Pentagon has “very interesting” information to share about possible alien life and will be “releasing a lot of things” and doing so “very, very soon,” as Trump says, then we are definitely here for it.
But this all calls for a huge — YUGE! — dose of skepticism. Because unless these UFO files offer some kind of definitive proof about Roswell, Area 51 or the like, they almost certainly will be a giant disappointment.
Trump teasing the UFO files might be akin to his push in the early days of his second term for the release of records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
“The American people deserve transparency and truth,” Trump said then.
No argument with that premise, but those files offered few revelations.
As for UFOs, despite thousands of reported UFO sightings over the decades, a 2024 report said the U.S. government has never confirmed an alien sighting.
Sean Kirkpatrick knows plenty about UFOs and UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena) because the physicist used to be director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which Congress formed in 2022 to investigate UAPs. Kirkpatrick told The Associated Press that Trump’s hints at revelations this time around amounted to bluster.
“Readers should not get their hopes up that there’s going to be some document with photos, interviewing the aliens when they came down,” Kirkpatrick told the AP. “Because that just doesn’t exist.”
Darn. Hopes dashed.
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But the UFO believers aren’t going to give in that easily. Regardless of what might turn up in the UFO files, humans will continue to look toward the heavens in search of clues about other forms of life beyond our planet and solar system.
After all, as Carl Sagan wrote in the novel “Contact”:
“The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”
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