Former President Barack Obama set off a wave of online speculation over the weekend after appearing on Brian Tyler Cohen’s podcast and fielding a question about aliens.
During a lightning round, Obama was asked whether aliens are real.
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“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” adding that they’re not being kept in Area 51, “unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president.”
The exchange was meant to be quick and informal, but the response spread rapidly online, prompting widespread reaction and calls for clarification.
On Sunday, Obama addressed the attention in an Instagram post.
“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention, let me clarify,” he wrote. “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there. 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!”
Area 51 and conspiracies
Speculation about alien life has long centered on Area 51, the top-secret Cold War test site in Nevada.
For decades, conspiracy theories have long claimed the CIA was storing extraterrestrial technology or even alien bodies there.
In 2013, however, the CIA officially acknowledged that Area 51 exists but didn’t confirm claims involving UFO crashes, aliens, or staged moon landings, ABC News reports.
