US government isn't keeping aliens from us, says Bill Nye
Technically Incorrect: The Science Guy isn't convinced that there's a stash of alien bodies waiting to be unveiled in Area 51 or anywhere else.
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
He doesn't think the government is capable of keeping secrets.
Trusting the government isn't the easiest of things for a lot of people.
They know that, years later, certain truths emerge that appear mightily like the opposite of what the government was telling us at the time.
So when many speculate about Area 51 and other places where aliens might be being kept against their own will, they feel sure that the government knows and it doesn't want to admit it.
Bill Nye insists this isn't so.
In a new Big Think video, the Science Guy, a label coined by Nye's 1990s show of the same name, made a simple case. "Just think how hard it is for the government to keep anything secret," he said.
He added that the government "kinda sucks" at secrecy.
Indeed, this is an era in which a former secretary of state is accused of having a private -- and possibly not very secure -- server through which government secrets passed.
It's a reasonable assumption, then, that if there were pictures of alien bodies or even living aliens they would have emerged by now.
Nye said that 10,000 people might be in on the supposed alien secret in the first place, so it's preposterous to think that at least one of them hasn't blurted it out. I do, wonder, of course, whether an ex-government type hasn't been feeding at least some things to the Weekly World News.
Not every senior figure shares Nye's confidence.
Earlier this year, Hillary Clinton promised that if she is elected president, she will release everything there is to know about Area 51.
Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, has also said that he wouldn't be at all surprised if aliens hadn't already paid us a visit.
Perhaps the government didn't realize they were here. Perhaps the aliens took one look and said: "Who are these ugly primitive beings? Let's get out of here."
Nye, who will host a Netflix science-based talk show next year, did try to toss out a little hope for an alien future.
"You may very well be alive," he said, "when we discover life -- or evidence of life, rather -- on Mars." He even imagines that we could be descended from Martians. That would, of course, explain so much.