Barack Obama casually revealing that the truth is (maybe) out there hints at a big ‘twist’ to come in the search for alien life, UFO experts say.
The former US President was asked on Saturday whether he believes aliens are real.
‘They’re real, but I haven’t seen them. They are not being kept in Area 51,’ he told YouTuber and podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen.
Obama clarified in an Instagram post that his remarks weren’t to be taken too seriously, though said ‘statistically’ it’s likely extraterrestrial life exists.
He added: ‘But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!’
A 2024 report by the Pentagon found no evidence of an alien cover-up, though it said that the belief that the government is hiding aliens will persist.
Nick Pope, who investigated UFOs for the British Ministry of Defence in the 1990s, said Obama’s comments have only intensified this belief.
‘Much of the UFO community has taken this as quasi-official confirmation of an extraterrestrial reality,’ Pope told Metro.
He added that rumours are swirling of a ‘disclosure’ event, where long-classified files around what are now called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena will be released.
‘Obama’s comments are being seen as part of an acclimatisation campaign, readying people ahead of a definitive, formal announcement,’ Pope said.
‘Whatever the truth, Obama’s comments have reignited the debate about UFOs, extraterrestrials, and what governments might know about all this.
‘Hang onto your hats: there are probably further twists to this tale ahead.’
UFOlogist Mark Christopher Lee is among those expecting a ‘twist’.
The filmmaker said many US presidents have seemingly had close encounters of the third kind, such as Ronald Reagan in 1974.
The then-California governor claimed he saw a zigzagging white light while aboard a plane flying over Bakersfield.
Nevertheless, Lee stressed that the government has always been tight-lipped about what it knows, if anything, about extraterrestrial beings.
UFOs have remained a mystery even after a former intelligence official testified in 2024 that the government was holding ‘nonhuman’ bodies.
Current US President Donald Trump has said that, as much as aliens are sometimes on his mind, he personally doesn’t believe in them.
Lee said: ‘That’s why there may be genuinely historic developments ahead from the current administration.
‘I have been informed by a reliable source close to President Trump that he has already prepared a full UFO disclosure speech and plans to deliver it on July 8.’
Yet Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist, said the search for life beyond our blue skies isn’t just what presidents and intelligence officials would know.
Rather, it’s ‘a scientific question that can be best answered openly within the mainstream of science’, such as interstellar visitors like 3I/ATLAS.
Loeb speculated that the solar system trespasser, a comet that drifted past Earth last year, may have been sent by aliens.
Formerly known as A11pI3Z, 3I/ATLAS is only the third interstellar visitor to be discovered passing through our corner of the galaxy.
Studying the next one could bring humanity one step closer to finding out if we’re alone or not in the universe.
‘Perhaps one day, the State of the Union address by the US President will include an official statement on the “State of the Universe”,’ Loeb added.
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