Director Steven Spielberg claimed aliens have already visited planet Earth – and now scientists said he may be on the money, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
The Hollywood icon, 79, believes real-life extraterrestrials may have “always” existed alongside humans.
“I absolutely think that they have been here and they are here. And who knows, maybe they’ve always been here,” said Spielberg, known for the sci-fi classics E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, along with his newest blockbuster, Disclosure Day.
As evidence, he cited “the circumstantial evidence that I’ve gathered throughout my whole life, everybody I’ve listened to and every documentary I’ve ever watched and all the testimonies in Congress that I’ve heard.”
His out-of-this-world claims are “a possibility,” said Dr. Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at Britain’s Keele University.
While aliens may not have “left artifacts on Earth” during a visit “4 billion years ago… they may have left artifacts on the moon or elsewhere in the solar system to monitor Earth,” he said.
But for many scientists, the astronomical distance between stars means aliens reaching Earth is nothing but movie magic.
“To get to the nearest known star with planets, Proxima Centauri, would take the Parker Solar Probe – the fastest spacecraft humans have launched – 6,500 years,” said Dr. Thomas Haworth, an astrophysicist with Queen Mary University of London.
Despite being “sure” there’s life somewhere in the universe, he said: “When we look to other planets, the distances and timescales just get larger and larger, making it harder and harder to travel.”
But Dr. van Loon points out a centuries-long journey could be accomplished thanks to the time-crunching effect that kicks in as a spacecraft approaches the speed of light.
“Time of the traveler slows down, which means they can get to their destination much quicker” than folks left behind would realize, he said.
But another expert points out that there’s no real reason for an alien civilization to visit Earth – or any proof to suggest they have.
Earth is “just one of hundreds of billions of planets in our own Milky Way galaxy,” said Professor Michael Garrett, an expert on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence from the University of Manchester.
“The notion that aliens would single us out, cross trillions of miles of space, and then mostly buzz around air bases and farmers’ fields rather than introducing themselves to a head of state is a bit far-fetched.”