Author: Pen Smith

Without any fanfare or announcement, the Executive Office of the President has registered the domain name, ‘aliens.gov’ and we only know about it because a bot flagged the registration.

When asked by Decrypt about this development, White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly wrote “stay tuned,” followed by a smiling alien emoji.

This seems to imply Trump’s promise to release ‘the alien files’ (the X files?) might be coming to fruition. A month ago he ‘truthed’ that he’d direct the Defense Department to “begin the process of identifying and releasing” files related to aliens.

Now obviously this is yet another distraction to draw attention away from Trump’s bugbear, the Epstein Files (or the war in Iran, oil prices, take your pick). Yet this is something that the public have been asking for. Because people really want to believe, huh?

But if you were hoping that the government will publish confirmation of extraterrestrial life on this website, well, don’t hold your breath.

Aliens haven’t visited planet earth.

I know a lot of people will dispute that, you might even be reading this saying that I can’t possibly know and that’s why I want to make the statement crystal clear.

Aliens have not visited planet earth.

Sure, maybe there’s a slim chance that they have, but there’s a slim chance that unicorns exist that doesn’t mean you go around saying unicorns are real, no, you say, unicorns don’t exist.

Because how do we judge if something is real or not (can’t believe I have to explain this)? Have you witnessed direct evidence of the thing? Can you reliably measure something indirectly that would indicate the existence of the thing? Even without evidence, what is the likelihood, using other evidence, that the thing exists?

AND THEN ask these same questions to other explanations for the same sightings and you’re more likely to get to the real answer.

So with unicorns, for example, no one has seen a unicorn, no one has found indirect evidence of unicorns (a discarded horn, idk), and unicorns are unlikely to exist because we understand horse physiology, narwhal physiology etc and they’re very separate. And if they’re magical, well magic is pretty unlikely for its own separate line of questioning.

Now ask the same questions for other explanations for unicorns. We’ve seen stories about unicorns and can trace the folkloric lineage of unicorns back to the bronze age. We have indirect evidence of where people might have got the idea from (narwhal horns, idk). And stories about unicorns are likely to exist because unicorns are cool and you can come up with anything in stories.

So now let’s apply these questions to aliens:

Now you might say that people have seen evidence of aliens but I’d argue it’s often not direct evidence. Like, if you saw a light in the sky, you’ve not seen an alien, you’ve seen a light in the sky. For people that have directly experienced aliens however (like literally interacted with little green men or been probed or whatever) well, because our senses can be misleading (see: ‘dreams’) then we move on to the next question.

Do we have indirect evidence of something that would indicate aliens? Again, the answer is no. You might argue that whatever signs like crop circles or the pyramids or whatever indicate aliens but again those things are just the things themselves, the pyramids exist, yes, but they don’t say explicitly that aliens exist, you’ve made a leap there.

And then the last one, imagine we have no evidence pointing to or from aliens, what is the likelihood that aliens have visited earth? Well, we do understand quite a bit about the size of the universe and how difficult interstellar travel is and the likelihood of one tiny speck of space finding another speck of space is like throwing a grain of sand at a target the size of a grain of sand a mile away. Ie: unlikely.

Then alternatively if we run other explanations through the same line of questioning: we have direct evidence of humans regularly hallucinating, we can offer likely (even if not confirmed) explanations for supposed signs of aliens (aerial phenomena, optical illusions etc.) and the likelihood of those explanations are far higher than just simply ‘aliens’ because we’ve directly witnessed them existing in other instances.

So with all that, is there still a slim chance that aliens have visited earth? Yes, but in the same way that there’s a slim chance unicorns exist. It’s so, so, so unlikely and we have other more likely explanations then we might as well call it like it is:

Aliens have not visited planet earth.

So despite all that, I know you might not be convinced and I know a majority of Americans aren’t convinced and still want to believe. And so when this website goes live and Trump puts up a bunch of blurry footage of nothing you’ll all go wild for a few days. But then eventually we’ll move on and nothing will change so stoke more misinformation.

But let’s not do that this time, shall we? Let’s not get caught up in the hype.

Keep you’re feet on the ground, son, because you’re not getting beamed up any time soon.