It is the question we have all been waiting for... has an extraterrestrial being ever walked on Earth?
If one organization knows the answer to that it would be the US Government, and the verdict is finally in.
On Thursday (October 17), a press conference was held at the Pentagon and Major General Pat Ryder was on hand to answer questions about some tough topics.
Some of these were the fact that North Korean soldiers are now fighting on behalf of Russia in Ukraine, Hamas' leader Yahya Sinwar died earlier this month and artillery strikes from the American stealth bomber B-2 on five military sites controlled by Houthi forces in Yemen.
Of course, there were more subjects but they lead the daily news agenda.
Journalist Jeff Schogol of Task & Purpose, a military news outlet, took a shot in the dark and decided quite sneakily that he would use this opportunity to ask in a roundabout way whether aliens had ever visited Earth.
Defense Department Press Secretary Major General Pat Ryder gave a witty response to whether aliens had visited Earth (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
He said: "Given the news cycle, you could announce anything about aliens or extraterrestrial life, and no one would care.
"So… I’m just going to take the shot. What do you got on UFOs, aliens, etc.?”
Hilariously, Ryder gave a nod to the epic sci-fi series The X-Files through its tagline 'the truth is out there', which opens every episode, before schooling Schogol.
He said: "The truth is out there, Jeff, and the truth is, we have no evidence to indicate extraterrestrial life has visited the planet."
So the 'truth' is that the US Government, the authority behind the infamous Area 51 which is regularly rumored to know a great deal about the unidentified flying objects, has never encountered alien life on Earth.
The official name of Area 51 is in fact the Nevada Test and Training Range, and it is now used as a training range for the US Air Force.
I digress.
So, what does Ryder mean when he explained that the truth is actually already out there?
A popular conspiracy theory is that a flying saucer crash landed in New Mexico baxck in 1947 and its remains were taken to Area 51 so that officials could reverse engineer the spacecraft (Getty stock)
In 2022, the Department of Defense established the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), created to look into the age-old question of whether aliens had visited Earth.
Following the conclusion of the investigation, a report read: "The aggregate findings of all USG [US Government] investigations to date have not found even one case of UAP [unidentified anomalous phenomena aka UFO] representing off-world technology."
It added that 'authentic sensitive national security programs' were 'mistaken' for UFO programs.
It continued: “AARO has no evidence for the USG reverse-engineering narrative provided by interviewees and has been able to disprove the majority of the interviewees’ claims."
So there you have it, the answer is a firm no... for now.
)
English (US) ·