Human intelligence wasn’t a cosmic evolutionary fluke, some scientists say. The case against cosmic loneliness is growing.

Former President Barack Obama said he did not see evidence that aliens “have made contact with us,” after sending social media abuzz by saying aliens were real on a podcast over the weekend.

For more than a century, popular culture has trained us to picture extraterrestrials as bug-eyed, bipedal “little green men” who look suspiciously like us in rubber suits. The scientists who actually spend their careers hunting for life beyond Earth ...

Obama replied “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in … what is it …?” “Area 51?” the interviewer responded. Then Obama said, “Area 51. There’s no underground facility. Unless there’s this enormous conspiracy, and they hid it from the president of the United States.”

For more than six decades, astronomers have listened for possible signals from extraterrestrial civilisations, with no confirmed detection to date. A .