The highly classified U.S. Air Force facility Area 51 in Nevada has long been the subject of conspiracy theories involving extraterrestrial life.
“There is no underground facility. Unless there is this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” Obama added on the podcast. Asked what the first question he wanted answered when he became president, Obama replied sarcastically: “Where are the aliens?”
After the comments sparked an uproar about alien life, Obama later wrote on Instagram: “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!” he added.
In 2017, POLITICO reported that the U.S. government had set up a multimillion-dollar program to investigate unidentified flying objects. In 2020, the Pentagon released three short videos that show what appear to be UFOs.
In 2025, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity detected organic molecules that scientists said could serve as potential chemical remnants of ancient life on the planet.