NEWS SUMMARY
US President Donald Trump has announced that US agencies will release all government files “related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex but extremely interesting and important matters”. The announcement came after former US President Barack Obama said in a podcast interview that he thinks aliens are real but he hasn’t seen them. Obama’s statement led to online buzz, so in a follow-up post, the former President clarified that during his presidency he saw no evidence of aliens ever having made contact with Earth, but that their existence is statistically probable. Trump admitted he does not have an opinion on the existence of extraterrestrial life.
Source: BBC
ACTIVITY 1
Ask students what the initialisms stand for. If students are unsure, tell them they are related to aliens and ask them to guess the words behind the letters.
- UFO
- UAP
Answers: Unidentified Flying Object; Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
ACTIVITY 2
Ask students to watch a video (or read out the news summary above) and say whether the US President Donald Trump and the former US President Barack Obama believe in aliens.
Answers: Trump does not have an opinion on it [00:13]. Obama thinks they’re real [00:52] because statistically it’s very probable that they exist [01:06].
ACTIVITY 3
Ask students to discuss the questions.
- Why do you think Trump said he would release all government files related to extraterrestrial life?
- What information do you think might be in the files?
- What could be the consequences of making these files public?
- The US Pentagon said that even though they’d never encountered any evidence of alien life, there were sightings that needed further investigation. What might the sightings be?
- Why do you think Obama’s statement drew so much interest?
- Do you believe in aliens? Why/Why not?
- Are there any films or books about aliens you like or don’t like? What are they about exactly?
ACTIVITY 4
Show students the images and ask what alien conspiracy theories they might be related to.
image 1, image 2, image 3, image 4
Possible answers: image 1 – governments know about alien existence and whenever someone discovers that, the person disappears; image 2 – aliens come to Earth and leave crop circles (patterns on fields) to communicate with humans; image 3 – creatures called ‘reptilians’ form countries’ governments and control Earth; they look like reptiles but can take a human shape whenever they want; image 4 – aliens regularly visit Earth, abduct people and make experiments on them
