I Want to Believe!

When news of the U.S. military downing three unidentified flying objects in as many days broke on the weekend, the internet was of course having a field day. Social media, a place rife with conspiracy theories on the best of days, was full of speculation about what was really going on in the United States.

The fact that General Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), refused to “rule out anything” when asked if extraterrestrials could be involved in the latest incidents didn’t exactly help stifle the budding alien hysteria. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did her best to calm everybody down in a White House press briefing on Monday, saying “there is no — again, no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns. And it was important for us to say that from here because we’ve been hearing a lot about it.”

Looking at the results of an Ipsos poll conducted across 36 countries in late 2022, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the latest incidents involving unidentified flying objects sparked some lively speculation online. When asked whether or not they think it’s likely that aliens would visit Earth in 2023, an average of 18 percent of respondents said that they considered extraterrestrial visitors a likely scenario for 2023. As the following chart shows, respondents from India and China were particularly open-minded when it comes to alien visitors, while people in Great Britain and Japan were among the largest sceptics.