JAKARTA – President Donald Trump’s order to open government data on UFOs has rekindled a long-standing issue that has always made people curious. The question is still the same. Is there intelligent life outside Earth, or are humans just staring at the sky while guessing?
The Independent, quoted on Monday, April 6, reported that the issue was again popular after former US President Barack Obama in February said the aliens were “real”, although he insisted he had never seen them and that nothing was hidden in Area 51. After that, Trump said government files would be opened because of the public interest he called “extraordinary”.
In recent years, the term UFO has begun to be replaced with UAP. UFO is an abbreviation for unidentified flying object or unidentified flying object. While UAP is unidentified anomalous phenomena or unidentified anomalous phenomena. The term UAP is used more broadly because it not only refers to flying objects, but also objects or phenomena in the air that have not been definitively explained.
In 2024, the Pentagon released hundreds of reports on UAP. However, the results of the search did not find any evidence that the objects were from outside the Earth.
President and CEO of the SETI Institute Bill Diamond said the existence of UAP does not automatically mean aliens. According to Diamond, many objects in the sky are reported because they cannot be immediately recognized as planes, drones, helicopters, or even birds. SETI is an abbreviation for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, an institution that investigates the possibility of intelligent life outside Earth.
Theoretical physicist Avi Loeb said that if there were intelligent beings observing Earth from afar, they would probably be disappointed in humans. “If I saw Earth from a distance, I would be quite disappointed,” said Loeb, as quoted by The Independent, referring to wars and global conflicts which he said were not a sign of intelligence.
Still referring to The Independent’s report, former Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet encouraged the government data to be opened more widely for research purposes. According to Gallaudet, a number of UAP videos belonging to the Navy are important to investigate because several objects are reported to have almost collided with the aircraft. “Since when has ignorance been a good national strategy?” he said.
Public interest in this issue is also quite large. A 2021 Pew Research Center survey showed that about two-thirds of Americans believe that intelligent life is likely to exist on other planets. About half of respondents also assessed the UFO reports from the military as possible evidence of intelligence beyond Earth.
Until now, there has been no evidence confirming the existence of aliens. However, reports of unidentified objects continue to emerge and encourage demands for the government to be more open about the data they have.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language.
(system supported by DigitalSiber.id)