95% of Us Believe in Aliens — But We’re All Afraid to Admit It

95% of Us Believe in Aliens — But We’re All Afraid to Admit It

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95% of Us Believe in Aliens — But We’re All Afraid to Admit It

A massive new study reveals that almost everyone believes intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, yet we vastly underestimate how many of our friends and neighbors share this belief — hiding our convictions like a shameful secret even though nearly all of us feel the same way.

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THE COSMIC CLOSET: WE ALL BELIEVE IN ALIENS BUT WE’RE AFRAID TO ADMIT IT

There’s a peculiar silence that settles over dinner tables when the conversation drifts toward life beyond Earth. People shift in their seats, change the subject, or offer noncommittal responses that betray nothing of their actual convictions. Maybe you’ve done this yourself — given a vague answer about how “the universe is pretty big” rather than saying what you actually think. The reason for this awkwardness, according to a groundbreaking new study from Harvard University and Reichman University, isn’t skepticism. It’s the exact opposite. Almost everyone at that table believes we’re not alone in the universe. They just don’t realize that everyone else at the table believes it too. They’re all staying quiet for the same reason — fear of being the odd one out — while surrounded by people who feel exactly the same way.

In other words, you might be sitting there thinking you’re the weird one for believing in aliens, while the person across from you is thinking the exact same thing about themselves. And so is the person next to them. And so is everyone else at the table. You’re all keeping quiet to avoid judgment from people who would actually agree with you.

It’s like a room full of people who all secretly love the same guilty pleasure song, but nobody will admit it because they assume everyone else has better taste. Then one day someone finally plays it out loud, and suddenly everyone’s singing along. That’s what this study discovered — except instead of a song, it’s the belief that intelligent life exists somewhere out there in the cosmos.

ALMOST EVERYONE BELIEVES — AND ALMOST NO ONE KNOWS IT

In November 2025, researchers Omer Eldadi from Reichman University’s B. Ivcher School of Psychology, Gershon Tenenbaum, and Harvard astronomer Abraham “Avi” Loeb published their findings after surveying 6,114 people. The sample wasn’t random — and that’s actually important to understanding what makes these results so striking. These were highly educated individuals with strong scientific engagement. More than 77% held at least a bachelor’s degree, and roughly 68% reported high to very high interest in scientific topics. These are exactly the kinds of people you’d expect to be the most cautious about extraordinary claims, the ones most likely to demand evidence before accepting anything, the folks who pride themselves on skeptical thinking.

So we’re not talking about people at a UFO convention here. These are scientists, engineers, professors, doctors — people trained to be skeptical, people who would normally say “show me the proof” before believing anything unusual. If any group of people was going to be cautious about claiming aliens exist, it would be this crowd.

The results were stark. When asked whether intelligent extraterrestrial life exists somewhere in the universe, 95.01% of participants said yes. And we’re not talking about a tentative “maybe” or a hedged “probably.” The majority expressed strong conviction. A full 62.59% selected “definitely exists” rather than merely “probably exists.” Another 32.42% chose “probably exists.” Add those together and you get that 95% figure. Only 1.02% — just 62 people out of more than 6,000 — believed intelligent extraterrestrial life definitely or probably does not exist. The remaining roughly 4% said they were uncertain.

Let me put that another way to help it sink in. If you gathered 100 highly educated, scientifically minded people in a room and asked them privately whether they believe intelligent alien life exists somewhere out there, 95 of them would say yes. Only one person would say no. The other four would shrug and say they’re not sure. That’s how overwhelming this belief is among people who pride themselves on careful, evidence-based thinking.

The strange part came when those same participants were asked a follow-up question: how many people in your social circle do you think share this belief? They estimated around 48.94% — basically half. In practical terms, they looked at their friends, family, and colleagues — people drawn from the same educated, scientifically engaged population, people statistically just as likely to believe in extraterrestrial intelligence as they were — and assumed roughly half of them were skeptics. They figured they were part of a slim majority at best, maybe even a minority depending on their particular social group.

Think about what that means for a moment. Nearly everyone believes, but everyone thinks they’re in the minority. It’s like being at a concert where 95% of the audience secretly loves the band, but everyone’s afraid to cheer because they assume they’re surrounded by people who got dragged there against their will. So everyone just sits there politely, keeping their enthusiasm to themselves, completely unaware that almost everyone around them feels the same excitement.

The gap between what people actually believe and what they think others believe measured 46.07 percentage points. To put that in perspective, imagine you’re taking a test and the correct answer is 95, but you guess 49. You’d be off by almost half. That’s how wrong people are about what their friends and neighbors actually believe about alien life.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

The researchers gave this phenomenon a name: the “cosmic closet.” It’s a vivid metaphor, and it captures something real about how people treat this particular belief. They keep it tucked away, hidden from view, brought out only in safe company — if ever. Just like someone might hide an unpopular opinion or an embarrassing hobby, people are hiding their belief in extraterrestrial intelligence even though that belief turns out to be almost universal.

The term draws on a specific pattern that social psychologists have been studying for almost a century. They call it pluralistic ignorance. Now, that’s a mouthful of academic jargon, so let me break it down into plain English.

“Pluralistic” just means “involving a group of people.” “Ignorance” means “not knowing something.” Put them together and you get a situation where a whole group of people are all ignorant — not about the facts, but about what everyone else in the group actually thinks. Everyone assumes they’re the odd one out, when in reality, almost everyone feels the same way. It’s ignorance about each other’s opinions, not ignorance about the topic itself.

This pattern was first identified way back in the 1930s by a psychologist named Floyd H. Allport and his students Daniel Katz and Richard L. Schanck. They kept noticing a puzzling pattern in their research: groups of people all pretending to go along with something that, privately, none of them actually supported. Everyone was faking agreement with a position that basically nobody actually agreed on.

You’ve probably experienced this yourself without knowing it had a fancy name. Here are some everyday examples that researchers have documented over the decades.

College students who privately feel uncomfortable with heavy drinking stay silent because they think their peers approve of the party culture. Meanwhile, their peers are staying silent for the exact same reason. The result? The drinking culture perpetuates itself even though most people aren’t actually enthusiastic about it. Everyone’s going along with something they think everyone else wants, when actually, most people would prefer something different.

Workers in offices who think a company policy is ridiculous keep their mouths shut because they assume everyone else supports it. They don’t want to be the one complainer, the negative person, the troublemaker. But their colleagues are doing the exact same mental calculation and reaching the exact same conclusion to stay quiet. So the bad policy continues because nobody realizes that almost everyone thinks it’s bad.

Here’s an example that might hit even closer to home — the classroom scenario. When a professor asks if anyone has questions and no hands go up, each confused student looks around at their classmates sitting there calmly and makes an assumption. They think to themselves: “I’m completely lost, but I’m not going to raise my hand because I don’t want to look stupid. Besides, nobody else is raising their hand, so they must all understand it. I must be the only one who’s confused.”

But here’s what’s actually happening. Every other confused student in that room is thinking the exact same thing. They’re all lost. They’re all afraid to admit it. They’re all looking at each other’s calm faces and assuming that everyone else gets it. The result is a room full of confused people, none of whom will admit it, all of whom think they’re uniquely lost. The lecture ends, everyone leaves still confused, and nobody ever finds out they were all in the same boat.

If you’ve ever sat in a class completely lost but refused to raise your hand because you didn’t want to look dumb — only to find out later that everyone else was just as confused — that’s this pattern in action. You weren’t alone. You just thought you were.

The cosmic closet works the same way, but the stakes feel higher and the topic feels more loaded. Admitting you believe intelligent life exists beyond Earth risks being labeled as gullible, unscientific, or prone to conspiracy thinking. People worry about being lumped in with UFO enthusiasts who claim to have been abducted, or with folks who think the government is hiding alien bodies in underground bunkers.

The belief itself — that somewhere in a universe containing hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars, intelligence has arisen more than once — is actually fairly modest when you think about it. It’s not claiming aliens have visited Earth. It’s not claiming the government is covering anything up. It’s just saying that in a universe this impossibly huge, we’re probably not the only intelligent beings who ever existed. That’s a pretty reasonable position given the sheer numbers involved.

But the social associations attached to the topic can feel toxic. Say you believe in extraterrestrial intelligence at a dinner party, and suddenly people might wonder if you also believe in alien abductions, government conspiracies, and crop circles. So people keep quiet. And because everyone keeps quiet, everyone assumes they’re alone in their belief.

It’s the difference between believing that statistically, life probably exists somewhere in the vast universe — a pretty reasonable position given the numbers — and believing that little gray men are mutilating cattle in Nebraska. Most people can absolutely separate those two ideas in their own minds. But they’re afraid others can’t or won’t, so they stay silent about both just to be safe.

WHAT THE EXPERTS ACTUALLY THINK

The Eldadi-Tenenbaum-Loeb study built on earlier research that established what scientists in relevant fields actually believe about extraterrestrial life. This matters because part of what the researchers wanted to understand was how accurately regular people perceive expert opinion — and whether learning what experts actually think changes anyone’s mind.

In 2025, Peter Vickers and colleagues at Durham University’s UK Centre for Astrobiology published a survey of 521 astrobiologists in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy. Now, astrobiologists are the scientists whose actual job involves thinking about life beyond Earth. That’s literally what they do for a living. They study the conditions required for life to exist, the places in the universe where those conditions might be found, and the methods we might use to detect signs of life if it’s out there. If any group of scientists is going to have informed opinions on whether extraterrestrial intelligence exists, it’s this one.

These aren’t hobbyists or enthusiasts or people who just find the topic interesting. These are the professionals — the people who have devoted their entire careers to studying whether life could exist elsewhere and how we might find it. They’ve spent years, sometimes decades, thinking about this question.

Their findings revealed an interesting pattern about how scientists think about different types of alien life. The more complex the life form, the less certain scientists are that it exists — but even at the highest level, a majority still think it’s out there.

When asked about basic extraterrestrial life — what scientists typically define as simple organisms, the kind of life that might exist in underground oceans on Jupiter’s moon Europa or floating in the clouds of Venus — 86.6% of surveyed astrobiologists agreed it likely exists somewhere in the universe. Only about 2% actively disagreed. That’s an overwhelming majority.

This scientific near-agreement on basic life makes sense when you understand the reasoning behind it. Scientists who hold to mainstream theories about Earth’s history believe that life appeared relatively early in our planet’s timeline. The chemistry required for life — carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen — isn’t rare or special. These elements are scattered all over the cosmos. And we keep finding more and more places that might be habitable: moons with underground oceans, planets in the right temperature zone around their stars, even some places we never expected.

In other words, the building blocks for life aren’t rare or unique to Earth. They’re everywhere. Scientists who subscribe to naturalistic models theorize that life might arise wherever conditions allow. Those who hold to a Creation model would say that the presence of these building blocks simply reflects a Creator’s design — and that life exists because it was intentionally created, not because it spontaneously emerged from chemistry.

The numbers shifted when the question turned to complex life — multicellular organisms, plants, animals. Here, 67.4% of astrobiologists agreed such life probably exists somewhere. Still a solid majority, but noticeably lower than the 87% for simple life.

The drop reflects uncertainty about how complex life comes to exist in the first place. Mainstream scientific theory proposes that complex life developed gradually from simpler forms over immense stretches of time. From this viewpoint, that transition might be rare or difficult, meaning many planets could have simple life but few would develop anything more complicated. The Creation model offers a different perspective — that complex life exists because it was designed and created that way, not because it emerged step by step from simpler organisms. Under this view, the question of whether complex life exists elsewhere depends on whether a Creator chose to create it elsewhere, not on probabilities and timelines.

For intelligent extraterrestrial life — beings capable of technology, communication, the kind of life we might actually detect or make contact with — 58.2% of astrobiologists expressed agreement that it likely exists somewhere. That’s still a majority, though smaller than the other categories. Less than 2% of astrobiologists actively disagreed with the idea. The rest said they weren’t sure, which is a perfectly reasonable position given that we have no direct evidence either way.

So here’s where the experts actually stand: among the scientists who study this question for a living, about 87% think simple alien life probably exists somewhere, about 67% think complex alien life probably exists somewhere, and about 58% think intelligent alien life probably exists somewhere. The numbers drop as the bar gets higher — simple life, then complex life, then intelligent life — but even for intelligent beings capable of building technology, a majority of experts say it’s likely real.

Scientists from other fields who were surveyed alongside the astrobiologists showed remarkably similar numbers, with 88.4% agreeing basic life likely exists elsewhere. This similarity challenges a common assumption — that scientists who study astrobiology are unusually optimistic about extraterrestrial life compared to scientists in other fields. They’re not. Physicists, chemists, and biologists who took the survey held essentially the same views. The belief that life exists elsewhere isn’t limited to people who’ve dedicated their careers to looking for it.

This expert agreement creates an interesting comparison point for understanding how regular people perceive scientific opinion. When the 6,114 participants in the Eldadi study were asked what percentage of astrobiology experts believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life, they guessed 67.63%. That’s actually a bit higher than the real number of 58.2%, so people slightly overestimated how many scientists believe.

That overestimation might seem like good news — it suggests regular people have a reasonable sense of what experts think, maybe even giving scientists a bit more credit than they deserve. But there’s a second layer to this that the researchers identified, and this one reveals a more interesting gap between perception and reality.

The researchers also asked: how strongly do you think scientists believe this? Not just “do they believe?” but “how confident are they?” When asked what percentage of scientists “definitely” believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life — as opposed to just thinking it “probably” exists — participants guessed only 21.1%.

That guess imagines scientists as extremely cautious and hedging, never really committing to anything without absolute proof. But that’s not what the actual data shows. Scientists who study these questions aren’t all sitting on the fence saying “well, maybe, I guess, we can’t be sure.” Many of them have strong convictions. Based on their interpretation of the evidence — the size of the universe, the abundance of potentially habitable planets, and their theoretical models about how life originates — they’ve concluded that we’re probably not alone. They’re not just saying “maybe.” A lot of them are saying “probably yes.”

We tend to imagine scientists as permanently skeptical, always hedging their bets, never committing to anything without absolute proof. But that’s not how it works in practice. Scientists are humans with opinions and convictions. They form views based on how they interpret evidence through their particular frameworks, and when that interpretation points in a direction, they’re willing to say so. On this particular question, many of them have looked at the data through the lens of their theoretical models and concluded that intelligent life elsewhere is more likely than not.

THE CONVICTION THAT REFUSES TO BUDGE

Perhaps the most revealing part of the study came when researchers tried to influence participants’ beliefs by revealing the actual expert agreement. This is a standard technique in research on how people respond to scientific information — you tell people what experts think and see if it shifts their views. It often works in other areas.

For example, learning that 97% of climate scientists agree on human-caused climate change tends to move public opinion toward accepting climate science. Learning that medical experts consider vaccines safe and effective tends to increase vaccination rates. When people find out what the experts actually think, they often update their own views to match. That’s the theory, anyway.

The thinking goes like this: if people only knew what the experts actually believe, they’d adjust their own views accordingly. We assume people want to align with expert opinion, at least on scientific questions where experts have special knowledge.

More than 5,000 participants were shown the Vickers data: 58.2% of astrobiology experts believe intelligent extraterrestrial life likely exists. The researchers then measured whether this information shifted anyone’s personal conviction about whether extraterrestrial intelligence is real.

The effect was essentially zero. Basically nothing changed. People who believed in extraterrestrial intelligence before learning the expert numbers continued believing afterward at the same rate and with the same intensity. People who were skeptical remained skeptical. People who were uncertain stayed uncertain. Learning that a majority of scientists share their belief — or don’t share it, for the skeptics — had almost no impact on what participants themselves thought was true.

In other words, telling people “hey, 58% of the scientists who study this stuff think intelligent aliens probably exist” didn’t change a single mind. Not the believers, not the skeptics, not even the fence-sitters. Everyone just kept thinking whatever they were already thinking.

This resistance to expert influence is surprising because it worked so differently than researchers expected based on other topics. In many areas, learning that experts hold a particular view shifts public opinion toward that view. That’s the whole idea behind science communication efforts that emphasize expert agreement — if people know what scientists think, they’ll update their own beliefs accordingly.

But convictions about extraterrestrial intelligence appear to run deeper than that. They seem anchored in something beyond just trusting or not trusting scientific authority. These beliefs seem rooted in personal reasoning or gut feeling that doesn’t bend when someone in a lab coat expresses an opinion.

The researchers were careful to check whether the information actually got through to participants. They tested whether people remembered and understood what they’d been told. After showing people the expert agreement figure, they asked participants to recall what percentage of scientists believed in extraterrestrial intelligence. A full 83.51% of participants correctly remembered the 58.2% figure.

So the information got through. People heard it. They processed it. They understood it. They could repeat it back accurately. It just didn’t change what they personally believed.

They heard the information. They understood it. They remembered it. They just didn’t care. Their minds were already made up.

This finding tells us something important about how beliefs regarding extraterrestrial intelligence work. These aren’t views that people update based on new evidence or expert opinion the way they might update beliefs about, say, the effectiveness of a new medication or the safety of a building material. These are convictions that seem to come from somewhere more fundamental.

Maybe it’s from contemplating the sheer size of the universe and drawing conclusions that feel self-evident. When you look up at the night sky and think about the scale of it all — billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, many of those stars with their own planets — the conclusion that we must not be alone can feel less like a belief and more like basic math. There’s just too much out there for us to be the only ones.

Or maybe these convictions come from a deeper philosophical stance about humanity’s place in the cosmos. Do we see ourselves as special and unique, or as one example of something that probably happens all over the universe?

Either way, once someone has arrived at their conclusion about alien life — whether through contemplating the numbers, through philosophical reasoning, or through some gut-level intuition — no expert opinion seems capable of changing their mind. The belief is just too deeply held.

WHO BELIEVES MOST STRONGLY — AND WHY

The study’s psychological analysis went beyond just measuring what people believe to identify factors that predicted how strongly people believed in extraterrestrial intelligence. Some of these predictors were expected; others were more surprising.

First and most predictably: consumption of UFO and UAP content. People who regularly read, watch, or listen to material about unidentified aerial phenomena were more likely to express strong conviction that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists.

This connection makes intuitive sense, but it raises a chicken-and-egg question that even the scientists couldn’t answer definitively. Does UFO content create believers by exposing them to evidence and arguments they find compelling? In other words, do people start out skeptical, then watch some documentaries or listen to some podcasts, and gradually become convinced? Or is it the other way around — do people who already believe seek out UFO content because it matches what they already think is true?

In other words… do you enjoy the stories I bring you in the Weird Darkness podcast because I inform you and educate you on subjects and change your point of view… or, do you enjoy the stories because they simply reinforce what you already believe to be true? Apparently even scientists have difficulty answering that question.

The study found a clear connection between consuming this type of content and believing strongly in extraterrestrial intelligence, but it couldn’t tell us which came first. Maybe both things are true for different people.

Second: low anthropocentrism. This is a term for the degree to which someone believes humans occupy a special or central place in the universe. Let me unpack that in plain English.

Some people believe humans are special — that we’re the pinnacle of creation, the most important beings in the universe, the whole point of everything. This view puts humanity at the center of cosmic significance. Other people see humans as just one species among potentially many — not uniquely special, just one example of what happens when the right conditions come together on a planet.

Participants who rejected human specialness — who saw humanity as one species among potentially many rather than as the unique pinnacle of cosmic creation — were more likely to believe in extraterrestrial intelligence.

This makes logical sense if you think it through. Scientists and philosophers sometimes call this the Copernican principle, named after the astronomer who figured out that Earth isn’t the center of the solar system. The idea is that Earth and humanity aren’t privileged observers sitting at the center of everything — we just occupy a typical position in a vast cosmos.

The logic runs like this: if Earth isn’t special, if there’s nothing unique about our planet or our solar system or our galaxy, then the conditions that produced intelligent life here should have produced it elsewhere too. The universe should be full of consciousnesses, not empty except for one lonely outpost.

That’s opposed to the special creation belief, where a Creator brought the Earth into existence, making it special in the universe, so only intelligent life would exist here — unless that same Creator worked similarly on another world elsewhere in the universe.

Your view on human specialness shapes how you interpret the evidence. If you think we’re cosmically unique, then our existence doesn’t tell you anything about what exists elsewhere. If you think we’re cosmically typical, then our existence suggests similar things probably happened in lots of other places.

Third, and perhaps most interesting from a psychological perspective: institutional distrust. Participants who expressed less trust in official institutions — governments, major organizations, established authorities — showed greater openness to the possibility of extraterrestrial existence.

This finding can be interpreted in different ways, and the researchers were careful not to jump to conclusions. One interpretation is that belief in extraterrestrial intelligence connects to conspiratorial thinking — the suspicion that governments are hiding evidence of contact, that official denials are actually cover-ups, that the truth is being suppressed by powerful interests. The long history of UFO conspiracy theories makes this interpretation reasonable.

But there’s another way to read it. Institutional skepticism might simply mean someone is more willing to think for themselves on topics where official sources don’t give clear answers. Someone who doesn’t automatically trust what authorities say might be more willing to form their own independent judgments on all sorts of questions, including questions where the official position is basically silence.

So which is it? Are people who distrust institutions more open to alien life because they think the government is covering something up? Or are they simply more willing to think independently on any topic where official sources don’t provide clear guidance? The study can tell us there’s a connection between institutional distrust and belief in extraterrestrial intelligence, but it can’t tell us why that connection exists. Maybe it’s both explanations. Maybe it depends on the individual person.

Religious factors also played a role in shaping beliefs about extraterrestrial life, based on earlier research from the Pew Research Center. In June 2021, Pew surveyed 10,417 American adults on questions about intelligent life beyond Earth. The main finding was that 65% of Americans believed intelligent life exists on other planets. That’s lower than the 95% figure in the Eldadi study, but that makes sense — the Eldadi sample was specifically selected for high education and strong scientific interest, while the Pew survey was meant to represent all American adults.

What the Pew data revealed about religious belief was striking. Americans who attend religious services on at least a weekly basis were considerably less likely to say intelligent life exists elsewhere — only 44% agreed, compared to 75% of those who seldom or never attend services. Similarly, around half of Americans who said religion is very important to them believed in extraterrestrial intelligence, compared to roughly three-quarters of those who said religion is less important in their lives. Atheists showed particularly strong belief at 85%, while only 57% of Christians overall agreed.

The connection between being more religious and being more skeptical about extraterrestrial life makes sense when you think about it from multiple angles. Many religious traditions emphasize human specialness — the idea that humanity was created in the image of God, or that Earth was specifically designed as a home for human life, or that humans have a unique relationship with the divine that no other beings share.

Extraterrestrial intelligence complicates that story. If there are other intelligent beings in the universe, it raises some difficult theological questions that don’t have easy answers. Does God have a relationship with those beings too? Were they also created in the divine image? If humans fell from grace and needed salvation, did aliens fall too? Do they need saving? These are genuine theological puzzles, and for some believers, the simpler solution is to maintain that we’re alone — that God created one intelligent species on one special planet, and that’s it.

That’s not to say religious belief and belief in extraterrestrial life can’t coexist — plenty of religious people believe both. The Catholic Church, for example, has said that belief in extraterrestrials wouldn’t contradict faith. But the pattern in the data is clear: on average, the more important religion is in someone’s life, the less likely they are to think intelligent aliens exist.

Age also mattered in the Pew data. Younger Americans believed most strongly — 76% of adults under 30 said intelligent life exists on other planets, compared to 57% of those over 50. Men were more likely than women to express this belief, 70% versus 60%. These demographic patterns have held relatively stable across multiple surveys over the years.

THE SOCIAL COST OF SILENCE

The cosmic closet phenomenon carries real consequences beyond individual awkwardness at dinner parties. When nearly everyone holds a belief but assumes they’re in the minority, it shapes what gets discussed openly, what gets funded by research institutions, and what gets taken seriously by gatekeepers in science and media. The collective silence creates a feedback loop: people stay quiet because they think they’re unusual, and because everyone stays quiet, everyone continues to think they’re unusual.

It’s a self-perpetuating cycle that feeds on itself. Nobody talks about it because they think nobody else believes it. And because nobody talks about it, everyone continues to think nobody else believes it. Round and round it goes.

Avi Loeb has spent years navigating this dynamic in his own professional life. The Harvard astronomer is the head of the Galileo Project, launched in 2021 to bring the search for extraterrestrial technological signatures into mainstream scientific research. The project’s explicit goal is to move the search for evidence of alien technology from “accidental or anecdotal observations and legends to the mainstream of transparent, validated and systematic scientific research.”

In plain terms, Loeb wants to take the search for alien technology out of the realm of UFO enthusiasts and amateur investigators and put it into the hands of serious scientists using serious scientific methods. His argument is that this is a legitimate scientific question that deserves legitimate scientific investigation.

Loeb’s credentials are extensive by any measure. He’s the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, founding director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative, and previously served as chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy for nine years — the longest tenure in that role. He’s published over a thousand scientific papers with excellent citation records, holds membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Physical Society, and previously served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology at the White House. He chaired the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. His TED talk was among the ten most popular of 2024. By the standard measures of academic success and influence, he’s at the very top of his field.

This isn’t some fringe character operating out of a basement or someone with questionable credentials making wild claims. This is one of the most accomplished and respected astronomers in the world, someone whose credentials would make most scientists envious, someone who has held positions of leadership in major scientific institutions.

Yet his work on potential extraterrestrial technology has drawn criticism from some colleagues who view such research as outside the bounds of serious astronomy. His 2021 book “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” — which argued that the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua might have been an artifact of alien technology based on its unusual physical properties — sparked intense debate within the scientific community. Some astronomers praised his willingness to consider unconventional possibilities. Others accused him of making claims that went beyond what the evidence could support, of prioritizing publicity over scientific caution, of wandering into territory where he lacked specific expertise.

The Galileo Project itself receives private funding from donors rather than federal grants. This isn’t by choice — federal agencies have declined to fund extraterrestrial intelligence research since 1993, when Congress cut NASA’s SETI program. SETI stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and it was a government-funded program to scan the skies for alien signals. After Congress pulled the plug, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute and other organizations focused on detecting alien signals have survived on private donations ever since.

Think about what that means. A majority of the public believes in extraterrestrial intelligence. A majority of relevant scientific experts think it probably exists. And yet government funding for researching the question remains essentially at zero. The topic is considered too embarrassing, too fringe, too likely to attract ridicule — even though the belief itself is mainstream by any measure.

Let that sink in for a moment. Most people believe aliens probably exist. Most scientists who study the question believe aliens probably exist. But the government won’t spend money looking for them because the topic is seen as too weird or too risky. It’s professionally embarrassing to work on, even though almost everyone privately thinks it’s a legitimate question.

The study’s authors suggest this disconnect between private belief and public discussion creates a barrier that has nothing to do with skepticism. The challenge isn’t persuading people that extraterrestrial intelligence might exist — most already believe it does. The general public believes it. Scientists believe it. The educated, scientifically engaged population surveyed in this study believes it overwhelmingly. The challenge is creating conditions where that near-universal belief can be expressed without professional penalty for scientists or social penalty for everyone else.

As Loeb has pointed out in his writing, claiming that Earth hosts the only technological civilization in a universe containing more than 10²² potentially habitable planets requires stronger justification than simply remaining open to evidence of extraterrestrial technology. That number — 10²² — is a 1 followed by 22 zeros. It’s an almost incomprehensibly large number of potentially habitable worlds.

The extraordinary claim, by this logic, isn’t that aliens might exist. The extraordinary claim is that we’re cosmically alone despite all those opportunities for life to arise elsewhere.

When you think about it from the mainstream scientific perspective, the burden of proof flips around. Given the size of the universe and the abundance of Earth-like planets, shouldn’t we have to prove we’re alone, rather than prove we’re not? From this viewpoint, claiming we’re the only intelligent life in the universe is the position that needs extraordinary evidence.  Unfortunately, it’s also impossible to prove a negative.

Those who hold to a Creation model would see it differently. The question isn’t about probability or time — it’s about purpose and design. If a Creator made Earth and its inhabitants for a specific purpose, then the size of the universe tells us nothing about whether life exists elsewhere. That would depend entirely on the Creator’s intentions, not on statistics.

THE FERMI PARADOX AND THE COSMIC CLOSET

The study’s findings add an unexpected psychological dimension to one of astronomy’s oldest puzzles: the Fermi Paradox. In 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi was having lunch with some colleagues when the conversation turned to extraterrestrial life. In the middle of the discussion, Fermi reportedly asked a simple question: “Where is everybody?”

The question became famous because it captured a genuine puzzle that scientists have been wrestling with ever since. The logic goes like this: if the universe is vast (it is), if it’s as old as mainstream science estimates, and if it’s full of habitable planets (it appears to be), and if intelligent life can emerge through natural processes, then alien civilizations should have had plenty of time to develop advanced technology, spread out across the galaxy, and either visit us or at least send signals we could detect. Our galaxy alone contains hundreds of billions of stars. Based on this reasoning, even if intelligent life is rare, it should exist somewhere else by now, probably in multiple places. So where is everybody? Why haven’t we seen any evidence of them?

Of course, this puzzle assumes a particular framework — one where life arises naturally given enough time and the right conditions. Those who hold to a Creation model might frame the question differently: not “why hasn’t life had time to develop elsewhere?” but rather “did the Creator choose to create life elsewhere?” The Fermi Paradox is really only a paradox if you accept certain assumptions about how life originates and how old the universe is.

That’s the Fermi Paradox in a nutshell: the apparent contradiction between the high probability that alien civilizations exist and the complete lack of evidence that they do.

Various solutions to the Fermi Paradox have been proposed over the decades, at least for those who accept its underlying assumptions. Maybe intelligent life is far rarer than scientists assume — maybe the steps required for life to arise and develop intelligence through natural processes are so unlikely that it basically never happens. Maybe civilizations tend to destroy themselves before achieving interstellar travel — they invent nuclear weapons or create environmental catastrophes or develop artificial intelligence that turns against them, and they wipe themselves out before they can spread to other star systems. Maybe the distances between stars are simply too vast to cross, even for advanced civilizations. Maybe aliens are out there but have chosen not to contact us, perhaps because they’re not interested, or because they’ve concluded we’re not ready, or because they have a policy of non-interference with developing civilizations. Maybe they’re communicating in ways we can’t detect or haven’t thought to look for.

The cosmic closet findings suggest another factor worth considering: maybe we’re not looking hard enough.

And maybe we’re not looking hard enough partly because the topic carries social stigma that discourages serious engagement. Think about it: if 95% of educated, scientifically engaged adults believe extraterrestrial intelligence exists, but government funding for research on the topic remains near zero, and scientists who pursue such research risk professional criticism and marginalization, then our failure to find evidence might say less about what’s actually out there than about how seriously we’ve actually been looking.

Maybe the answer to “where is everybody?” is partly “we haven’t really been trying to find out.” Not with the resources, funding, and seriousness the question deserves, anyway.

This isn’t to say that extraterrestrial intelligence definitely exists, or that we’d find it if we just spent more money on research. The universe might genuinely be empty of other minds. That’s possible. But the cosmic closet creates a mystery of its own — a situation where a scientific question is simultaneously considered fascinating by almost everyone and embarrassing to pursue professionally. That combination doesn’t seem like it would lead to rigorous, well-funded investigation.

A SPECIES WAITING IN SILENCE

The cosmic closet represents a strange collective state for humanity to find itself in. Billions of people around the world are privately convinced that intelligence exists beyond Earth, yet many of them are equally convinced they hold a minority opinion. They stay quiet at dinner parties, hedge their answers in casual conversation, and assume the people around them would judge them for beliefs those same people almost certainly share. Everyone is hiding the same thing from everyone else, and no one realizes they’re all hiding the same thing.

We’re a planet full of people who believe in aliens, all pretending we don’t because we think everyone else doesn’t. And the silence feeds on itself, reinforcing everyone’s false assumption that they’re unusual.

The Pew Research data from 2021 found demographic patterns that have remained consistent across surveys for years. The generational differences in belief might suggest that conviction about extraterrestrial intelligence is growing over time as older generations are replaced by younger ones who grew up with a different cultural relationship to the idea. Kids today grow up with stories about space exploration, with movies and TV shows featuring alien life, with news about discovering planets around other stars. Maybe that shapes how they think about the question.

Or the generational difference might reflect something about how beliefs change as people age. Maybe young people are more open to speculative ideas generally, and become more skeptical as they get older. Only research tracking the same individuals over decades could tell us which explanation is right.

A 2017 survey by the research firm Glocalities across 24 countries found that 47% of respondents globally believed in “the existence of intelligent alien civilizations in the universe.” That’s lower than the 95% figure in the Eldadi study, but the Glocalities survey was designed to represent the general population rather than specifically educated, scientifically interested people. Even in the general population, nearly half of humanity believes we’re not alone. That’s a lot of people sharing a belief they might be hesitant to express out loud.

Studies in Sweden and Peru have found even higher rates of belief among university students. A survey of Swedish high school and university students found that 90% believed in the existence of extraterrestrial life. A similar study of 1,237 Peruvian university students found 92% believed in life beyond Earth. Neither study specified intelligent life versus basic life, so those numbers likely include people who believe in alien microbes as well as people who believe in alien civilizations. But they reinforce the overall pattern: belief in extraterrestrial life is common, especially among educated young people.

The gap between what we believe and what we think others believe creates a peculiar form of isolation. In a universe potentially teeming with intelligent life, we’ve managed to make ourselves feel alone even among our own species — not because we disagree about what’s out there, but because we won’t admit we agree. The silence perpetuates itself. Each person who stays quiet reinforces everyone else’s assumption that speaking up would be risky.

The Eldadi-Tenenbaum-Loeb study was submitted for peer review in November 2025 and posted to the arXiv preprint server, a repository where scientists share their research before it goes through the formal publication process. It joins a growing body of research from Reichman University and Harvard examining not just what people believe about extraterrestrial life, but how those beliefs interact with social perception, scientific communication, and the psychological barriers to discussing questions that most of us, it turns out, already think we know the answer to.

The cosmic closet exists not because people disagree about whether we’re alone in the universe, but because they’ve been afraid to find out they agree. And maybe the first step out of that closet is simply knowing that almost everyone else is in there with you, waiting for someone to speak up first.

REFERENCES

NOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

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