And on Friday, the Department of Defense (which has renamed itself the Department of War without the required authorization from the US Congress) began releasing those files.

So what’s in there? You can see for yourself here. The short answer is “not much.”

The longer answer is that there are pages and pages of old FBI records, unresolved cases, eyewitness interviews, and the usual grainy, black-and-white images that show dots but nothing remotely conclusive about aliens, alien spaceships, or any alien technology.

In short, there is no truly meaningful evidence here for aliens, alien visitations, alien abductions, or anything like that.

Shocking, we know.

This is not extraordinary evidence

The release doesn’t preclude the possibility that aliens have visited Earth, of course. It’s a massive galaxy, and in recent years, scientists have confirmed that many of the billions of stars in just our Milky Way Galaxy alone have vibrant planetary systems. And there are billions of galaxies. So there are a massive number of worlds out there where life could have evolved and attained sentience and spaceflight capabilities. Perhaps we are alone. Perhaps we live in a “dark forest” universe. We just don’t know.

But we do know that claiming aliens have visited Earth is a major statement. Here, we should remember the words of Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

The release of files by the US military on Friday is only the beginning. There is more to come. But what we have seen today falls far, far short of extraordinary evidence.