It’s not aliens. It’ll probably never be aliens. So stop. Please just stop.
Enlarge / Spy balloon mania has taken alien mania to the next level. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)
Aliens have been having a moment in recent years.
For decades the notion of unidentified flying objects-UFOs-and little green men running around Roswell, New Mexico, remained comfortably confined along the fringes of societal discourse. But no longer. Serious people in the government are taking a serious look at the phenomenon.
The story of why this posture began to change begins about 15 years ago and is long and complex. (This New Yorker article is a good place to start.) But the basic gist is that then-Nevada politician Harry Reid, a powerful political figure who at times led the US Senate, began to take it seriously. So he started shoveling money at the Pentagon to study the issue.