Barack Obama Said Aliens 'Are Real'

"It says a lot about how crazy our world is these days that the former president of the United States can casually say "[aliens] are real" in a podcast, and it was a story for maybe a weekend afternoon. Part of the reason this is not a bigger revelation is that Barack Obama squashed it, putting out a statement after this answer raised some eyebrows to try to lower them and downplay what he said."

"The "statistically" argument Obama speaks of is the Fermi paradox. All we know about the universe points towards the notion that there just have to be other earth-like planets like ours that contain the conditions for life-and not one or two, but billions of them. A 2019 peer-reviewed study from Penn State scientists that utilized data from the Kepler Space Telescope found that about one in six of the 20 billion sunlike stars in the Milky Way could house an earthlike planet in its goldilocks zone. Enrico Fermi was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, and when the subject of the vastness of the universe and flying saucer reports came up at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1950, Fermi famously blurted out at lunch with other scientists, "where is everybody?""

"Definitely not at "in...what is it? Area 51," according to the former president! "There's no underground facility" Obama additionally volunteered about this famed base whose name he just couldn't recall a second ago. It's easy to dismiss this all as jokey bullshitting on a podcast that doesn't mean anything, but like many much more earthly defenses of Obama's underwhelming presidency, this downplays the fact that he is one of the most powerful humans to have ever existed and he has agency too. Everyone reading this can bullshit about aliens, but presidents h"

Barack Obama casually said "[aliens] are real" during a podcast lightning round, then shared the video and offered a clarification afterward. He referenced a "statistically" framed argument tied to the Fermi paradox, noting that the universe likely contains billions of Earth-like planets. A 2019 peer-reviewed Penn State study using Kepler telescope data estimated roughly one in six sunlike stars could host an Earth-like planet in a habitable zone. Obama denied the existence of an underground facility at Area 51. The piece emphasizes that casual remarks by powerful figures carry influence over public response.

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