Many Americans believe we are not alone in the cosmos — an opinion which has increased over the last couple of decades. The majority of people who hold this view also believe we’ll make contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life over the next hundred decades. And, on the subject of UFOs, many believe the U.S. government knows more than it’s telling that the general public.
Sixty-six percentage of Americans now feel that there’s intelligent life on other planets — a rise of 10 percentage points since the last time CBS News asked this particular question in 2017. As lately as 2010, fewer than half of Americans thought this was .
Furthermore, a third of people that believe in aliens life believe human contact with beings from the other planet will happen during their life (including 10 percent of Americans who volunteer we have). Another 24% believe this contact will be reached over the next hundred decades. Thirty-six percent believe it will not occur until farther in the future, while 6 percent believe that while there’s intelligent life on other planets, we’ll not get contact .
Although many Americans say they think aliens have contacted us many more at least entertain the possibility. Fifty-one percentage of Americans believe UFOs — or Unidentified Flying Objects — may at times be the consequence of alien spacecrafts seeing Earth. This increases to 71% among people who think intelligent life on other planets is present.
And many Americans believe all UFOs are, the U.S. government knows more than it is telling the public. Only 20 percent believe the government has advised what it knows about UFOs.
The survey used a random digit dial methodology. For the mobile sample, interviews were conducted with the man who answered the telephone.
The data are weighted to reflect U.S. Census statistics on demographic factors. The margin of error contains the effects of conventional weighting processes which expand sampling error marginally.
