It's official: The White House says it has no evidence that life exists outside our planet or that extraterrestrials have been in contact with humans.

The statement from Phil Larson, who works on space policy and communicaton at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, comes as an official response to two online petitions to the Obama administration asking it to acknowledge an ET presence on Earth.

Larson, responding on the White House official website, writes:

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. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye. However, that doesn't mean the subject of life outside our planet isn't being discussed or explored. In fact, there are a number of projects working toward the goal of understanding if life can or does exist off Earth.

Among the projects is SETI — the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence — which was set up with help from NASA but is funded privately. That project involves telescopes listening for any signal from another world.

"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," Larson writes. "Many have also noted, however, that the odds of us making contact with any of them — especially any intelligent ones — are extremely small, given the distances involved."