Former US President Barack Obama said in a podcast over the weekend that aliens are real, sparking a social media frenzy, that he has seen no evidence that extraterrestrials “have made contact with us.”
During a lightning question with podcast host Brian Taylor-Cohen, Obama was asked: “Do aliens really exist?”
“They’re real,” he continued, “but I didn’t see them. And they’re not being held at Area 51.”
On Sunday, the former president issued a statement on Instagram that appeared to clarify the meaning of his comments, which later went viral.
“I’m trying to stay true to the spirit of the Speed Wheel, but since it’s raising eyebrows, let me clarify. Statistically, the universe is so large that the likelihood of life being there is high. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the likelihood of aliens visiting us is low, and I’ve seen no evidence of alien contact during my time as president. Really!”
The secrecy surrounding Area 51, a top-secret Cold War testing site in the Nevada desert, has long fueled conspiracy theories among UFO enthusiasts.
In 2013, the CIA acknowledged the site’s existence but not UFO crashes, black-eyed aliens or moon landings.
The declassified documents name the 8,000-square-mile (20,700-square-kilometer) facility that U.S. government officials have refused to acknowledge for decades.
The base has been the testing ground for many top-secret aircraft, including the U-2 in the 1950s and later the B-2 stealth bomber.
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This story corrects the name of the podcast.
