Can we prove that aliens exist?

At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio there is, it is rumored, a secret underground room where a crashed alien spacecraft is kept. It’s warm to the touch, buzzing with a strange energy, an indication of technology light years ahead of ours. Meanwhile, over at Groom Lake Air Force Base in Nevada, otherwise known as Area 51, there are apparently more alien spaceships, some intact, as well as the preserved bodies of alien pilots.

Is it true? Well, a recent survey indicated that half of the US population believed their government was covering up evidence of aliens. As someone involved in the scientific search for life in space, however, I put that down to poor journalism, a lack of critical thought and shallow scientific knowledge.

I would love to believe we are being visited by life born under the light of a different star and which took an adjacent evolutionary path before setting off to explore the cosmos. What would they be like — their biology, history, philosophy, art and culture, and of course their fabulous scientific discoveries and technology that enabled them to traverse the galaxy to Earth? Sadly, however, the evidence is weak, to put it mildly.

The ‘disclosure’ advocates see the lack of proof as evidence of a conspiracy

The past few years have seen unprecedented interest in alien visitation. It began in 2017 with an article in the New York Times whose authors included a fervent UFO advocate and which revealed the existence of a secret Pentagon department set up to evaluate the alien threat. The publication released three videos shot by US navy pilots showing Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) performing maneuvers that some said defied the laws of physics. President Barack Obama weighed in, telling news network CBS: “What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are, we can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory.”

We now know the UAPs seen by the pilots probably have prosaic explanations. Extraordinary alien craft they are not. We also know a small group of eccentrics had for years been pushing their alien and paranormal theories at the Department of Defense. Mention of their interest in poltergeists and werewolves was omitted from the article, seemingly to avoid damaging its credibility.

It was said that the 2017 article propelled UAPs from the fringe into the mainstream. We have been in overdrive ever since. Those promoting the UAP cover-up theory push for the big secret to be revealed through what they call “disclosure.”

I cannot take many of those demanding disclosure seriously. Some journalists say they already have proof of visitations from outer space but choose not to publish, forgoing the chance to become the richest and most famous journalists on the planet. Australian journalist Ross Coulthart even says he knows where there is an alien spaceship so heavy it couldn’t be moved and had to have a containment building placed over it. But he won’t say anything more. Woodward and Bernstein this is not.

Then there are a few ex-military people who preen themselves with what they see as a special layer of credibility. They know secret stuff they can’t tell you, but what they will say is that the phenomenon is real and that there is a cover-up. When it comes to providing compelling details, though, they can’t, because it’s a secret.

Last year former intelligence analyst David Grusch testified before the Congress that he knew all the juicy details about crashed spacecraft, thirty of them and their pilots (or “non-human biologics.” But he wouldn’t say more in public — or even, it seems, in private. We are still waiting and are assured others are going to come forward.

But it’s now too late. The current wave has come crashing to, er, Earth thanks to revelations about a former intelligence official and self-described “disclosure advocate” called Luis “Lue” Elizondo. He was there at the beginning in that 2017 New York Times article, saying he ran the Pentagon UAP investigation. Later the Pentagon said he did no such thing and that any interest he had was in a private capacity and not part of his work.

When Elizondo left the Pentagon his intelligence background and faux credibility made him the hottest UFO celebrity on the planet. He has done hundreds of podcasts and interviews and has now produced a much anticipated book, Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs, disclosing what he knows. This has turned out to be, as the Americans say, a nothing burger.

Elizondo tells discredited UFO stories, speaks of science fiction tropes and blue orbs flying around his bedroom. He describes his remote viewing of terrorists — yes, terrorists — and talks about angels and demons, not to mention his own considerable superpowers. It’s just another fairy tale, bad science, bad writing and absolutely nothing new. No disclosure. After years of teasing us, Elizondo has put UFOs back into the fringe.

But then UFOs have always been on the fringe by their very definition: always on the verge of visibility, just out of focus and our reach. Today there are several billion camera phones which survey the planet like never before. At any one time a million people are airborne, many with a window seat. Oh for one, just one, close-up, in-focus picture of an extraordinary alien spacecraft.

Many of the disclosure advocates see the lack of proof as evidence of a conspiracy and will not accept any answer unless it’s the one they want. It means the alien visitation story can never come to an end. It also allows room for every kind of pseudoscientific opinion. There are so many dollars to be made, interviews to be given, books to be written, documentaries to be aired.

At conferences you can pay to see the familiar celebrities, the contactees and the abductees tell their stories about the day their world stood still. The universe is stranger than we know, the aliens are here, some bring cosmic wisdom, others galactic war. It is all a secret too terrible to be fully revealed. Just don’t ask for evidence.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.