Steve Nesius/Reuters
- Elon Musk spoke to Fox News' Tucker Carlson on Tuesday about extraterrestrial life.
- The SpaceX CEO said "if anyone would know about aliens on Earth it would probably be me."
- And wished it would happen so he could get the top tweet of all time.
Elon Musk spoke about the potential of alien life — and his hope that it would get him the best tweet of all time — in an interview with Fox News' Tucker Carlson that aired on Tuesday.
The SpaceX CEO said he's often asked by people whether aliens exist. "I think if anyone would know about aliens on Earth it would probably be me," Musk said in the interview.
"Yeah, I'm, you know, very familiar with space stuff," he added. "But to the best of my knowledge, we see no evidence of conscious life anywhere in the universe."
This week, SpaceX was preparing to launch the most powerful rocket ever – which is also fully reusable – from its base in Boca Chica, Texas. Technical problems forced it to postpone the launch to Thursday, but Musk is still hopeful that Starship will the pave the way to landing humans on Mars.
"I've seen no evidence of aliens. I wish, I would immediately tweet it out," Musk said.
"That'd be like probably the top tweet of all time," he added, jokily. "It's the jackpot with some 8 billion likes — next level jackpot if you find the aliens."
Earlier in the interview, Musk also suggested that news organizations should only tweet 10 of the best news stories every day. Last weekend, he tweeted 102 times – ten more posts than the New York Times' main account, per Socialblade.
As Musk met with Twitter staff last June, Insider reported that Musk also said he hadn't seen any evidence of aliens as he discussed the possibility of extra-terrestrial life.
And he told Twitter employees how the mission of SpaceX is to "to make life multiplanetary and thus improve the problem lifespan of consciousness."
In February — as confusion mounted over the Chinese spy balloon and other unidentified aerial phenomena — Musk joked: "Don't worry, just some of my [alien] friends of mine stopping by."
The billionaire told Carlson he does hope that there is alien life in the universe, and that any aliens are peaceful.
"Obviously, the two important characteristics, but I'm just saying we haven't seen anything yet," he added.