Official White House Position
In November 2011, the White House released an official response to two petitions asking the U.S. government to acknowledge formally that aliens have visited Earth and to disclose any intentional withholding of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings. According to the response, "The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race." Also, according to the response, there is "no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye." The response further noted that efforts, like SETI, the Kepler space telescope and the NASA Mars rover, continue looking for signs of life. The response noted "odds are pretty high" that there may be life on other planets but "the odds of us making contact with any of them—especially any intelligent ones—are extremely small, given the distances involved."
Read more about this topic: Extraterrestrial Hypothesis
Famous quotes containing the words official, white, house and/or position:
“I was perfectly certain that I had nothing to offer of an individual nature and that my only chance of doing my duty as the wife of a public official was to do exactly as the majority of women were doing ...”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“Stands the Spring! heralded by its bright-clothed
Trumpeters, of bough and bush and branch;
Pale Winter draws away his white hands, loathed,
And creeps, a leper, to the cave of time.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Happy will that house be in which the relations are formed from character; after the highest, and not after the lowest order; the house in which character marries, and not confusion and a miscellany of unavowable motives.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1966)