Steven Spielberg’s new film Disclosure Day imagines the moment 8 billion humans find out that we are not alone in the universe. The movie, which opens in US theaters on June 12, is a fictional account of the government cover-up and subsequent “disclosure” of evidence that aliens have contacted Earth. The UFO community has been chasing that type of cinematic big reveal for 80 years. But it’s more likely that monumental scientific discoveries, like the detection of the Higgs boson in 2012 and the confirmation of gravitational waves in 2016, are a better guideline for how real-world disclosure is likely to play out: through long-running research and with verifiable results. The approach would be less glamorous but still highly impactful. The prospect of a blockbuster disclosure by the US government that alien life exists and has contacted Earth has felt more likely in recent years, even as results have underwhelmed. Since 2023, a bipartisan group in Congress has held three hearings featuring whistleblowers on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), summoning whistleblowers who alleged a decades-long cover-up …