CC Mcdlttx/Flickr

What if it's just us? What if this is all there is?

The clocks going back stimulated me to this thought. Then, grabbing my laptop from beneath my 1,200-thread sheet duvet cover, I discovered that the White House might think the same.

You see, the president's "We The People" initiative, which allows groups to ask specific questions of the government and get a response, received a couple of queries about alien life, existence beyond here, and little green people with strange antennae coming out of their heads.

Naturally, interested entities were highly expectant for a reply. So they will have been disheartened when Universe Today reported that the official verdict is: "The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race."

There will be those immediately suspicious of the word "engagement". They will point to the strange happening between Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries.

But the government's view, expressed by Phil Larson from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, seems resolute in its failure to connect. And really, he's not covering anything up. Honest.

"There is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye," he declared.

But here's the good news. Look at the headline, placed delicately above his "We The People" response: "Searching for ET, But No Evidence Yet."

So, as a nation, as a people, we have not lost faith. Larson also goes on to tip his hat to SETI and other organizations that are doggedly on the quest.

He also bows toward fine left-brainers who offer hope: "Many scientists and mathematicians have looked with a statistical mindset at the question of whether life likely exists beyond Earth and have come to the conclusion that the odds are pretty high that somewhere among the trillions and trillions of stars in the universe there is a planet other than ours that is home to life.

The government is, however, worried about the distances involved. Could it be that a reliance on oil has prevented us from creating superfast machines that might take us all up there, far away, in nanoseconds?

That was merely my speculation. However, sightings continue to occur and are only occasionally proved false.

A couple of weeks ago, so many were excited at footage captured by the sleuths on Sunday Night Football of strange lights in the sky over New Orleans.

Then there were the lights over an Arizona high school football game that surely portended an extra-worldly coming. Sadly, these have been shown to be, well, skydivers.

I know that we will get there in the end. They used to make sci-fi movies about controlling computers and those came true. So all of the alien movies must surely have fact at their core.

It's just that it all takes time. And those aliens are peskily subtle in the way that they communicate.