The idea that aliens in flying saucers have visited Earth and made contact with humans has long been fodder for science fiction writers and conspiracy theorists. But recently, the topic has gone mainstream, and the government has even weighed in.
Over the decades, Americans have filed thousands of reports claiming to
have seen aircraft in the sky with unusual shapes or movements that seemed to defy conventional explanation—Unidentified Flying Objects, or U.F.O.s, in the military’s original term for the phenomena. Over the summer, U.S. intelligence officials responded to a call from Congress to explain the sightings by releasing the first unclassified government report on the topic in two decades. While the report didn’t conclude that there are extraterrestrials hovering about, it also couldn’t explain many of the 144 sightings it examined, most of which came from highly trained Navy and Air Force pilots.
“This is a very positive development,” Mark Rodeghier, scientific director at the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), an independent U.F.O. research organization, says of the report. “We haven’t had much success over the years getting what I call the establishment—politicians, the media, top main scientists—interested and supporting U.F.O. investigation. We didn’t think it would happen this time, but it did.”
Some people believe that aliens in flying saucers have visited Earth and connected with humans. The idea has long been popular with science fiction writers and conspiracy theorists. But recently, the topic has gone mainstream. Even the government has weighed in.
Over the decades, Americans have filed thousands of reports about these mysterious sightings. In them, people claim to have seen aircraft in the sky with unusual shapes or unexplainable movements. The military’s original term for the phenomena is Unidentified Flying Objects, or U.F.O.s. Over the summer, U.S. intelligence officials responded to a call from Congress to explain the sightings. That led to the release of the first unclassified government report on the topic in two decades. The report didn’t find that there are extraterrestrials hovering about. Still, it couldn’t explain many of the 144 sightings it examined. And most of these reports came from highly trained Navy and Air Force pilots.
“This is a very positive development,” Mark Rodeghier, scientific director at the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), an independent U.F.O. research organization, says of the report. “We haven’t had much success over the years getting what I call the establishment—politicians, the media, top main scientists—interested and supporting U.F.O. investigation. We didn’t think it would happen this time, but it did.”