Steven Spielberg's new sci-fi blockbuster Disclosure Day, which hit theaters June 12, explores what might happen when the world gets undeniable proof that we're not alone in the universe. While the film is pure Hollywood, the possibility that we may one day see real evidence of UFOs is moving from science fiction toward scientific plausibility.

For the past couple of months, the federal government has been declassifying and publishing reports of UAPs, or unidentified anomalous phenomena, on a website operated by the Department of Defense. 

While the government's disclosures haven't provided any actual evidence of extraterrestrial life or alien spacecraft, they signal a shift from its previous stance of secrecy on the subject. The Pentagon's real-world releases of strange sightings draw an obvious parallel to the movie's plot.

Without spoiling too much, Disclosure Day starts in the middle of the action: A whistleblower played by Josh O'Connor has already stolen proof of the cover-up of alien contact, while a Kansas City TV anchor played by Emily Blunt suddenly gains strange new abilities. The pair spends much of the 2.5-hour movie on the run from a shadowy government organization that wants to keep the truth hidden.

Spielberg was inspired to make Disclosure Day following a groundbreaking 2017 New York Times story, which published military videos of UAP sightings and alleged a secret UAP program in the Pentagon. According to some government officials and experts, the NYT report helped reduce the stigma of sharing UFO incident reports, especially among service members.

In subsequent Congressional hearings, former Navy pilots gave eye-witness accounts of UAPs in the sky, and a former intelligence officer testified to the existence of a secret UAP crash-retrieval program, where nonhuman "biologics" were retrieved from crash sites.

I've looked through many of the UAP files released so far, and I haven't found any proof of alien life, but they're still interesting to read. Some of the documents date back to the Roswell crash era of the 1940s, one of the most famous alleged cases of a flying saucer recovery. Aliens or not, official military correspondence from 1948 that mentions "flying discs" remains a fascinating historical record.

The media's interest, along with the government's acknowledgment that it has long investigated UFOs, has helped move the topic beyond conspiracy books and online forums. In recent years, NASA commissioned an independent study team to examine UAPs, which produced a report (PDF) noting that the agency "should contribute to a comprehensive, government-wide approach to collecting future data." Even the late Pope Francis addressed the idea that the discovery of aliens and religious faith need not contradict one another.

While the videos, documents and testimonies on UAP sightings are intriguing to watch and read, the materials still lack the empirical data to conclusively prove that extraterrestrial life has visited Earth. Still, the sightings continue to be debated, with some scientists pointing to other possible explanations, such as drones, satellites or weather phenomena -- or even optical and infrared distortions. Many of the cases seem to point to more mundane, earthly origins.

As Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World, his 1995 book on critical thinking and the scientific method: "Everything hinges on the matter of evidence. The more we want it to be true, the more careful we have to be. No witness's say-so is good enough."

Have you ever seen a UFO?

Disclosure Day imagines what would happen if we were to definitely know that aliens are here. In the real world, the SETI Institute has been studying the stars for traces of life since 1984. Sagan briefly served on the board before he died in 1996. He even wrote the novel that inspired the 1997 sci-fi film Contact starring Jodie Foster, which popularized SETI. The institute has been taking the question of extraterrestrial life seriously for a long time, but hasn't found any evidence of it yet.  

On June 5, the International Academy of Astronautics ratified an updated set of post-detection protocols, developed with input from SETI members, to address modern challenges in evaluating and verifying evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. The new protocols will help govern how scientists announce evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in today's global media environment, which is far more complex than it was when the original protocols were last revised 15 years ago. 

Astrophysicist Michael Garrett, chair of the IAA SETI post-detection committee, told CNET that misinformation is one of the key reasons the protocols were updated. Artificial intelligence, deepfakes and social media engagement algorithms have made it harder than ever to tell what's true from false on the internet. 

"Today, rumors, conspiracy theories, fabricated documents, and AI-generated images, audio and video can spread extremely quickly," Garrett says. "Independent verification by the global scientific community remains the most effective way to establish credibility and maintain public trust."

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Garrett also said two common misconceptions he hears are that the protocols assume extraterrestrial civilizations would be hostile or that researchers would try to keep a discovery secret.

"Neither is true," Garrett said. "The protocols do not make assumptions about the intentions of extraterrestrial intelligence. Nor do they create any mechanism for secrecy."

Instead, Garrett says the protocols emphasize openness and public accountability. 

"The updated protocols encourage researchers to make observational data, analysis methods and software tools publicly available wherever possible once a candidate signal has been verified," Garrett said. So if scientists ever discover alien life in the real world, hopefully we won't need a government whistleblower to get the word out.  

Maybe the truth isn't out there

It's entirely possible, maybe even likely, that we'll never know what's really out there. That hasn't stopped decades of rampant speculation and a deep fascination with the topic. Sagan argued that many people believe in aliens because humans have historically looked for ways to fill gaps in mysteries and phenomena that go unexplained. 

In 2021, Pew Research reported that 65% of Americans believe that intelligent life exists on other planets. In 2023, an Ipsos poll found that 42% of Americans believe in UFOs, and that 10% say they've actually seen one. Now that the government is releasing decades' worth of UAP reports and sightings, it seems more likely than before that we might get proof we're not alone. Or maybe not.

Sagan long warned about the dangers of ignoring scientific rigor and how seductive pseudoscience can be. Even when mundane reasoning can explain the fantastic, we're often inclined to abandon our skepticism and ignore the boring explanation. 

"We've not yet found compelling evidence for life beyond the Earth," Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World over three decades ago. "We're only at the very beginning of the search, though. New and better information might emerge, for all we know, tomorrow."