DO YOU BELIEVE IN EXTRATERRESTRIAL ALIENS?

But first, the latest Winter Olympics medal count:

• 1. Norway: 24 Total (11 Gold, 6 Silver, 7 Bronze)
• 2. Italy: 22 Total (8 Gold, 4 Silver, 10 Bronze)
• 3. United States: 17 Total (5 Gold, 8 Silver, 4 Bronze)
• 4. Japan: 17 Total (3 Gold, 5 Silver, 9 Bronze)
• 5. France: 15 Total (4 Gold, 7 Silver, 4 Bronze)
• 5. Germany: 15 Total (4 Gold, 6 Silver, 5 Bronze)
• 7. Austria: 13 Total (4 Gold, 6 Silver, 3 Bronze)
• 8. Sweden: 11 Total (5 Gold, 5 Silver, 1 Bronze)
• 8. Netherlands: 11 Total (5 Gold, 5 Silver, 1 Bronze)
• 10. Switzerland: 9 Total (4 Gold, 2 Silver, 3 Bronze)
• 10. Canada: 9 Total (1 Gold, 3 Silver, 5 Bronze)
• 12. South Korea: 5 Total (1 Gold, 2 Silver, 2 Bronze)
• 12. Australia: 5 Total (3 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze)
• 14. Czech Republic: 4 Total (2 Gold, 2 Silver, 0 Bronze)
• 14. China: 4 Total (0 Gold, 2 Silver, 2 Bronze)
• 16. Great Britain: 3 Total (3 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze)
• 16. Slovenia: 3 Total (2 Gold, 1 Silver, 0 Bronze)
• 16. Poland: 3 Total (0 Gold, 2 Silver, 1 Bronze)
• 16. Finland: 3 Total (0 Gold, 0 Silver, 3 Bronze)
• 20. Latvia: 2 Total (0 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze)
• 20. New Zealand: 2 Total (0 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze)
• 20. Bulgaria: 2 Total (0 Gold, 0 Silver, 2 Bronze)
• 23. Brazil: 1 Total (1 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze)
• 23. Kazakhstan: 1 Total (1 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze)
• 23. Belgium: 1 Total (0 Gold, 0 Silver, 1 Bronze)

The USA is in a rut. But that is mostly because there was only one event today that resulted in medals:   Women's Large Hill Ski Jumping.  I'll probably get this updated by the time I post, for at this point three Americans are in the running for medals.  Then again, I might not report the final results so you can see the competition yourself.

On a lighter note, what kind of animal are the Winter Olympic mascots Tina and Milo?

• First, they are siblings, with Tina white and Milo brown.
• In Italy, they are called ermellini.

• 
  English-speaking fans call them stoats.
• Scientically, Mustela erminea, which have brown coats, but in some species, they turn white in the winter, except for a black tail tip.

Okay, now to the story of the day:  former president, Barack Obama, said in an appearance on the No Lie podcast with Brian Tyler Cohen to the query about the existence of extraterrestrial life, that "They're real."  Here is a news story.  Further:

"But I haven't seen them," he quickly added. Obama also addressed the enduring conspiracy theory that the U.S. government is harboring aliens and UFOs at Area 51, a top-secret United States Air Force facility located in the Nevada Desert. "They're not being kept in Area 51," he stated. "There's no underground facility - unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States."

How likely do you think it is that each of the following beings exist? (% who believe they definitely or probably exist):  YouGov, November 4-9, 2025.

                                       U.S. Adults  Democrats  Independents  Republicans

Aliens                                  56               61                  59                   46   

Bigfoot                                28               27                  26                   32

The Yeti                              23               20                  24                   25 

Loch Ness monster            22               18                  17                   12

So Obama reflects the U.S. norm.  Plus:

30% of Americans believe UFOs, or unidentified flying objects, are probably alien ships or life forms; 45% believe they have some other explanation. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe UFOs are probably alien in origin (34% vs. 26%).

More:

16% of Americans think we will definitely or probably make contact with alien life within the next 10 years. 29% think we will make contact within the next 50 years, 42% think we will do so in the next 100 years, and 46% think we will make contact with alien life in the next 200 years.

And:

Twice as many Americans say an alien visit would have a negative effect on human civilization than a positive one

But going back to former president Barack Obama:

Twice as many Americans say an alien visit would have a negative effect on human civilization than a positive one

Want to be totally befuddled about a survey on the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life and the effects of revealing expert consensus?  

• Read this.  
• When surveyed, 86.6 per cent of astrobiologists recently said they either agreed or strongly agreed that extraterrestrial life likely exists somewhere else in the Universe. 
• When asked the same question but for complex or intelligent life, the agreeing percentage only drops to 58.2 per cent.
• 
  For instance, our galaxy contains somewhere between 100 and 400 billion stars. Astronomers have already confirmed around 4,000 planets orbiting other stars – and that’s in our galaxy alone. The Milky Way itself is just a tiny fraction of the observable Universe, about one millionth of it.  Scale that up, and you’re looking at roughly 100 sextillion stars (100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) – each potentially hosting planets.

• 
  So if aliens likely exist out there, why haven’t we discovered them yet? And why have we never received any extraterrestrial visitors? Welcome to the Fermi Paradox.
• In other words, scientists tend to believe some sort of life (might well be only microbiological) does exist somewhere else in the universe, but this sense drops for the evolution of intelligent  life, and is lowered quite a bit more for alien life to actually visit Planet Earth.

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