Firewalled.
This is a research article published in the
International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , June 2019 , pp. 280 – 288
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1473550417000556
New YouGov polling finds that most Americans believe aliens exist, and many think that aliens have paid a visit to Earth in recent years. Americans are more likely to believe alien encounters would have a negative effect on human civilization than to think it would have a positive effect, and many believe that aliens would bring new diseases and unintentional harm or outright hostility to people if we were to encounter them.
Have we established the first contact yet? 37% of Americans believe U.S. scientists or officials have made contact with aliens already, and 43% believe we are on the brink of breaking through to our extraterrestrial neighbors. There’s a lot of faith in how the government is handling our potential overlords, too, as 3 in 5 Americans say the government is taking UFOs and aliens just seriously enough.
This 2022 YouGov poll finds that skepticism regarding the existence of aliens had declined since the 1990s, when — according to a 1996 poll by Newsweek — only 20% of Americans believed that Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) were more likely to be proof of alien life than to have a natural scientific explanation (32%). Today, 34% of Americans believe UFOs are likely alien ships or life forms, while only 32% say they’re likely to have a scientific explanation.
