Seriously, I doubt it would even take that long. We get used to shit so quickly, and the news cycles have to keep feeding us new things, the only way we’d keep talking about the aliens if they kept doing new and interesting things. I’d be willing to bet a year later there would be some people who straight up forgot about it. “Oh yeah, aliens! Are they gonna, like, visit at some point or just keep exchanging calls with the Whitehouse?”
I’m with you. Yes, people acclimate to all kinds of things, but sentient aliens are going to take more than a few days.
Idk. A few years ago the US Government released videos of UFOs taken by US Fighter Pilots, and the conversation about the videos didn’t even last a day.
The clue is in the name. The U stands for unidentified, which means you don’t know what it is, which does not in turn mean that it’s aliens. The only thing those videos proved was that someone’s camera recorded something weird. Prove that those weird things were actually aliens and not some obscure sensor glitch or weather phenomenon or a secret government tech demo, then we’ll freak out.
I remember watching them and the conversation about them. But that’s different than proof and admission that sentient alien life exists. It’s one thing to suspect while also having other possible explanations (could be secret tech that we or adversary nations developed, could be sensor errors or optical illusions) and another for the president to be like “I want you to meet ambassador Xlurg”
People will absolutely have a hard shit about it when it happens, but I think that, after so much sci-fi exposure in our culture, humanity (or, most of it) would be able to wrap their heads around the idea of extra-terrestrial aliens. Unfortunately, a lot would probably just see them the same way they see any other “aliens”, and be xenophobic (or exoxenophobic as the case may be) jerks about it.
We almost certainly will be meeting/interacting with alien tech if it ever happens. Living things just aren’t likely to be evolved to travel the vast distances between stars.
Gonna be AIs talking, if it ever happens.
There’s part of an episode in Orville about this very topic. I need to finish up that show.