Steven Spielberg says he believes extraterrestrials have already visited Earth, and may even still be here. Speaking to CBS while promoting his new film, "The Disclosure," which centers on government secrets about UFOs and alien life, the Oscar-winning director said, "I definitely think they've been here, and they're here. And who knows, maybe they've always been here."
Spielberg said his view changed after years of accumulated testimony, videos, cellphone footage, military accounts, and formal hearings in the U.S. Congress. He acknowledged that he has never personally seen a UFO, joking that he does not understand why aliens have not reached him because he feels like "their agent." Still, he said he no longer dismisses people who claim to have seen something. "When I was younger, I was not exposed to the astonishing amount of visual documentation that exists today," he said. "I now believe the believers."
Scientists quoted in the report treated the claim cautiously. Dr. Jacques van Loon, an astrophysicist at the University of Keele, said an alien visit is "a possibility," though he noted that Earth a billion years ago would have been mostly oceans with microbial life and barren continents. He added that, theoretically, extraterrestrials might have left objects on the Moon or elsewhere in the solar system, perhaps as monitors or as debris, but that is far from proof.
Other experts emphasized the distance problem. Dr. Thomas Howarth of Queen Mary University of London said even Parker, humanity's fastest spacecraft, would need about 6,500 years to reach Proxima Centauri, the nearest known star with planets. Dr. William Alston of the University of Hertfordshire said the speed of light is likely the universe's ultimate speed limit. Prof. Michael Garrett of the University of Manchester argued that Spielberg is a great storyteller, but that stories are not science, and said real alien visitors would have produced more than blurry clips and eyewitness accounts. Prof. Carol Oliver of the University of New South Wales said there is currently no reliable evidence that aliens have visited us now or in the past, though unidentified aerial phenomena should still be studied.
