Unidentified flying object

"UFO" redirects here. For other uses, see UFO (disambiguation).

Unidentified flying object (commonly abbreviated UFO) is a popular term for any aerial phenomenon that is not readily identified. Research by military and civilian groups shows that after investigation UFOs are generally identified either directly or by applying Occam's Razor. Therefore some, such as the USAF, who originally coined the term in 1952, define UFOs as only those objects remaining unidentified after scrutiny by expert investigators, while other definitions call something a UFO from the time it is first reported as being unidentified.

In addition, in popular culture the term UFO is often used as a synonym for alien spacecraft, although alternatively an anomaly may be classified as a UFO independently of opinion as to its origins. Because of these different meanings that have become associated with UFO, some investigators now prefer to use the broader term Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (or UAP).

Some studies have established that only a tiny percentage of reported UFOs are hoaxes. The majority of reports indicate something real, perhaps appearing anomalous, but most of these represent honest misidentifications of conventional objects such as aircraft, balloons, or astronomical objects such as meteors or bright planets. This leaves a small percentage, usually between around 5-15%, of genuinely unexplained sightings which form the core of the UFO mystery.

Modern reports and the first official investigations of UFOs began during World War II with sightings of so-called foo fighters by Allied airplane crews, and in 1946 with widespread sightings of European "ghost rockets". UFO reports became even more common after the first widely publicized United States UFO sighting, by private pilot Kenneth Arnold in mid 1947 (which gave rise to the popular terms "flying saucer" and "flying disc"). Since then, millions of people believe they have seen UFOs and tens of thousands of such reports have been cataloged.

History

On April 14, 1561 the skies over Nuremberg, Germany were reportedly filled with a multitude of objects. Woodcut from 1566 by Hans Glaser.

Unexplained aerial observations have been reported throughout history. Some were undoubtedly astronomical in nature: comets, bright meteors, one or more of the five planets which can be seen with the naked eye, planetary conjunctions, or atmospheric optical phenomena such as parhelia and lenticular clouds. An example is Halley's Comet, which was recorded first by Chinese astronomers in 240 B.C. and possibly as early as 467 B.C.

File:BaptismOfChristByAertDeGelder Fitzwilliam Cambridge.jpg

"The Baptism of Christ", 1710, by Aert de Gelder. Proponents say this painting depicts UFOs.

Other historical reports seem to defy prosaic explanation, but assessing such accounts is difficult. Whatever their actual cause, such sightings throughout history were often treated as supernatural portents, angels, or other religious omens. Journalist Daniela Giordano says many Medieval-era depictions of unusual aerial objects are difficult to interpret, but argues some that depict airborne saucers and domed-saucer shapes are often strikingly similar to UFO reports from later centuries.Art historians, however, explain those objects as religious symbols, often represented in many other paintings of Middle-Age and Renaissance.

Shen Kuo (1031–1095), a Song Chinese government scholar-official and prolific polymath inventor and scholar, wrote a vivid passage in his Dream Pool Essays (1088) about an unidentified flying object. He recorded the testimony of eyewitnesses in 11th century Anhui and Jiangsu (especially in the city of Yangzhou), who stated that a flying object with opening doors would shine a blinding light from its interior (from an object shaped like a pearl) that would cast shadows from trees for ten miles in radius, and was able to take off at tremendous speeds.

Pre-modern reports

Main article: List of UFO sightings

Before the terms "flying saucer" were coined in 1947 and "UFO" in 1952, there were a number of reports of unidentified aerial phenomena. These reports date from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century. They include:

• On January 25, 1878, The Denison Daily News wrote that local farmer John Martin had reported seeing a large, dark, circular flying object resembling a balloon flying "at wonderful speed." Martin also said it appeared to be about the size of a saucer, the first known use of the word "saucer" in association with a UFO.

Drawing of E. W. Maunder's November 17, 1882 "auroral beam" by astronomer Rand Capron, Guildown Observatory, Surrey, UK, who also observed it.

• On November 17, 1882, a UFO was observed by astronomer Edward Walter Maunder of the Greenwich Royal Observatory and some other European astronomers. Maunder in The Observatory reported "a strange celestial visitor" that was "disc-shaped", "torpedo-shaped", "spindle-shaped", or "just like a Zeppelin" dirigible (as he described it in 1916). It moved rapidly from horizon to horizon. The sighting was during high auroral activity; therefore Maunder assumed it was some extraordinary auroral phenomenon never before seen and called it an "auroral beam".
• On February 28, 1904, there was a sighting by three crew members on the USS Supply 300 miles west of San Francisco, reported by Lt. Frank Schofield, later to become Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Battle Fleet. Schofield wrote of three bright red egg-shaped and circular objects flying in echelon formation that approached beneath the cloud layer, then changed course and "soared" above the clouds, departing directly away from the earth after two to three minutes. The largest had an apparent size of about six suns.
• 1916 and 1926: the three oldest known pilot UFO sightings, of 1305 cataloged by NARCAP. On January 31, 1916, a UK pilot near Rochford reported a row of lights, like lighted windows on a railway carriage, that rose and disappeared. In January 1926, a pilot reported six "flying manhole covers" between Wichita, Kansas and Colorado Springs, Colorado. In late September 1926, an airmail pilot over Nevada was forced to land by a huge, wingless cylindrical object.
• On August 5, 1926, while traveling in the Humboldt Mountains of Tibet's Kokonor region, Nicholas Roerich reported that members of his expedition saw "something big and shiny reflecting sun, like a huge oval moving at great speed".
• In the Pacific and European theatres during World War II, "Foo-fighters" (metallic spheres, balls of light and other shapes that followed aircraft) were reported and on occasion photographed by Allied and Axis pilots but were dismissed by scientists as St. Elmo's Fire or illusions.
• On February 25, 1942, the U.S. Army detected unidentified aircraft both visually and on radar over the Los Angeles, California region. No readily apparent explanation was offered. The incident later became known as the Battle of Los Angeles, or the West coast air raid.
• In 1946, there were over 2000 reports of unidentified aircraft in the Scandinavian nations, along with isolated reports from France, Portugal, Italy and Greece, then referred to as "Russian hail", and later as "ghost rockets", because it was thought that these mysterious objects were Russian tests of captured German V1 or V2 rockets. Over 200 were tracked on radar and deemed to be "real physical objects" by the Swedish military.

The Kenneth Arnold sighting

Main article: Kenneth Arnold § June 24, 1947 UFO sighting

This shows the report Kenneth Arnold filed in 1947 about his UFO sighting.

The post World War II UFO phase in the United States began with a famous sighting by American businessman Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947 while flying his private plane near Mount Rainier, Washington. He reported seeing nine brilliantly bright objects flying across the face of Rainier towards nearby Mount Adams at "an incredible speed", which he "calculated" as at least 1200 miles per hour by timing their travel between Rainier and Adams.

File:Arnold crescent 1947.jpg

This shows Kenneth Arnold holding a picture of a drawing of the crescent shaped UFO he saw in 1947.

Although there were other 1947 U.S. sightings of similar objects that preceded this, it was Arnold's sighting that first received significant media attention and captured the public's imagination. Arnold described what he saw as being "flat like a pie pan", "shaped like saucers and were so thin I could barely see them...", "half-moon shaped, oval in front and convex in the rear. ...they looked like a big flat disk" (see Arnold's drawing at right), and flew "like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water". (One of the objects, however, he would describe later as being almost crescent-shaped, as shown in illustration at left.) Arnold’s descriptions were widely reported and within a few days gave rise to the terms flying saucer and flying disk. Arnold’s sighting was followed in the next few weeks by hundreds of other reported sightings, mostly in the U.S., but in other countries as well.

After reports of the Arnold sighting hit the media, other cases began to be reported in increasing numbers. In one instance a United Airlines crew sighting of nine more disc-like objects over Idaho on the evening of July 4. At the time, this sighting was even more widely reported than Arnold’s and lent considerable credence to Arnold’s report.

American UFO researcher Ted Bloecher, in his comprehensive review of newspaper reports (including cases that preceded Arnold's), found a sudden surge upwards in sightings on July 4, peaking on July 6–8. Bloecher noted that for the next few days most American newspapers were filled with front-page stories of the new "flying saucers" or "flying discs". Reports began to rapidly tail off after July 8 , when officials began issuing press statements on the Roswell UFO incident, in which they explained the debris as being that of a weather balloon.

Over several years in the 1960s, Bloecher (aided by physicist James E. McDonald) discovered 853 flying disc sightings that year from 140 newspapers from Canada, Washington D.C, and every U.S. state except Montana.

UFO studies and result differences

It has been estimated from various studies (such as those cited below) that 50-90% of all reported UFO sightings are eventually identified, while 10-20% remain unidentified (the rest being "garbage cases" listed as having "insufficient information" to enable classification). Various studies (such as the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book) have also shown that only a small percentage of UFO reports are deliberate hoaxes (typically less than 1%). Instead, the vast majority are honest misidentifications of natural or man-made phenomena.

The following are some major scientific studies undertaken during the past 50 years regarding UFOs:

• Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 (referred to further below as BBSR) was a massive statistical study the Battelle Memorial Institute did for the USAF of 3,200 UFO cases between 1952 and 1954. Of these, 22% remained unidentified (“true UFOs”), using the stringent criteria that all four scientific analysts had to agree that the case had no prosaic explanation, whereas agreement of only two analysts was needed to list the case as explained. Another 69% were deemed identified, and for the remainder, 9%, there was insufficient information to make a determination.
• The official French government UFO investigation (GEPAN/SEPRA), run within the French space agency CNES between 1977 and 2004, scientifically investigated about 6000 cases and found about 13% defied any rational explanation (UFOs), while about 46% were deemed readily identifiable. (The remainder, or 41%, lacked sufficient information.)
• When the AIAA in 1971 reviewed the results of the 1966-1969 USAF-sponsored Condon Committee study, 30% of the 117 cases remained unexplained.
• Of about 5,000 cases submitted to and studied by the civilian UFO organization NICAP, 16% were judged unknowns.

In contrast, much more conservative numbers for the percentage of UFOs were arrived at individually by astronomer Allan Hendry, who was the chief investigator for the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). CUFOS was founded by astronomer Dr. Allen Hynek (who had been the scientific consultant in charge of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book) to provide a serious scientific investigation into UFOs. Hendry spent 15 months personally investigating 1,307 UFO reports.

In 1979, Hendry published his conclusions in The UFO Handbook: A Guide to Investigating, Evaluating, and Reporting UFO Sightings. Hendry admitted that he would like to find evidence for extraterrestrials but noted that the vast majority of cases had prosaic explanations. He deemed 89% IFOs and only 9% unidentified. If only “hardcore” cases -- well-documented events which defied any conceivable conventional explanation -- the figure for UFOs dropped to only 1.5%.

One possible reason for Hendry's more conservative results might be that he was operating from a very different set of data. Hendry examined almost exclusively civilian reports, mostly from inexperienced witnesses. In contrast, government studies, such as the U.S. Project Blue Book or the French GEPAN/SEPRA, or the civilian NICAP study, contained large numbers of civilian and military pilot sightings and other military sightings, usually considered to be higher evidentiary cases because of the greater experience of the witnesses and the presence of corroborating data such as radar.

As an example of the difference, military personnel made up only 1% of Hendry's witnesses, but 38% of the Battelle / Air Force study. The military witnesses also contributed a much higher percentage of “excellent” or “good” cases (58% for the military vs. only 33% for the civilian cases), which were more likely to be judged unknowns in the Battelle study. Overall, 29% of military cases were judged as unknowns vs. 17% for civilian cases.

Because the results for the Battelle BBSR study and Hendry’s CUFOS study are readily available and contain many statistical breakdowns of cases, they will be contrasted in detail below.

Battelle Memorial Institute breakdown of cases

Out of 3,201 cases, 69% were judged to be identified, 22% were unidentified, and 9% had insufficient information to make a determination. A report classified as "unidentified" was defined as: "Those reports of sightings wherein the description of the object and its maneuvers could not be fitted to the pattern of any known object or phenomenon."

Only two of four scientific analysts had to agree for a case to be listed as an IFO, but all four analysts had to agree for it to be judged a UFO. About twice as many of the excellent cases were judged UFOs as the poorest cases. The difference was accounted for mostly by cases judged having “insufficient information”, which was only 4% for the best cases but 21% for the worst. Quality of cases didn’t seem to have much effect on the various category percentages for the IFOs, except in the “psychological” category, in which the poorest cases had much higher relative rates.

Breakdown by category and case quality

Category/Case Quality	All	Excellent	Good	Doubtful	Poor
Astronomical	22%	24%	23%	19%	23%
Aircraft	22%	19%	22%	25%	16%
Balloon	15%	12%	17%	17%	13%
Light phenomena	2.2%	.9%	2.4%	2.9%	1.1%
Birds	1.0%	0.9%	1.0%	1.2%	0.7%
Clouds, dust, etc.	0.4%	0%	1.0%	0.4%	0%
Psychological	2.0%	0%	0.5%	3.3%	3.3%
Other	5%	5%	5%	5%	6%
Insufficient information	9%	4%	4%	14%	21%
Unknown origin	22%	33%	25%	13%	17%

BBSR further broke these results down based on whether the identification was considered certain or merely doubtful. For example, in both the astronomical and aircraft IFO categories, 12+% were considered certain and 9+% were doubtful. Overall, of the 69% listed as IFOs, 42% were thought to be solved with certainty, while 27% were still considered doubtful.

In addition, if a case was lacking in adequate data, it was placed in the insufficient information category, separate from both IFOs and UFOs.

Based on the Battelle statistical analysis, the percentages of unknowns increased significantly with the quality of the cases. This is contrary to the contention of some skeptical analyses, such as the 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, that the remaining unidentified cases were the result of poor quality reports or insufficient information.

Military vs. civilian breakdown

	IFO			UFO			Insufficient Information
	Mil	Civ	All	Mil	Civ	All	Mil	Civ	All
Best reports	65%	72%	68%	32%	24%	28%	2%	4%	3%
Worst reports	70%	70%	70%	24%	14%	16%	7%	17%	14%

The Battelle BBSR study consisted of many internal military reports; fully 38% of the cases were designated as military. Military witnesses tended to submit better quality reports, had much fewer reports rated as having insufficient information, and had higher percentages of unknowns. As in the previous breakdown, the percentage of UFOs again rose with case quality for both the military and civilian subcategories.

In the summary table, the best reports are those rated excellent and good; worst reports are doubtful” and poor.

Comparison of IFOs to UFOs by characteristics

A key study of BBSR was to statistically compare IFOs and UFOs by six characteristics: color, number of objects, shape, duration of observations, speed, and light brightness. If there were no significant differences, the two classes were probably the same, the UFOs then representing merely a failure to properly identify prosaic phenomena that could already account for the IFOs. On the other hand, if the differences were statistically significant, this would suggest IFOs and UFOs were indeed distinctly different phenomena.

In the initial results, all characteristics except brightness tested significant at less or much less than 1% (brightness was greater than 5%). By removing "astronomical" sightings from the "knowns" and redoing the test, just two categories, number and speed, were significant at less than 1%, the remainder having results between 3% and 5%. This indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between the characteristics ascribed to UFOs and IFOs, but perhaps not as significant as the initial results suggested. However, for two characteristics, brightness and speed, the significance actually increased with the revised test. Furthermore, even with revision, statistically significant results for six independent characteristics is highly improbable (less than one in a billion, by multiplying all probabilities together), strongly suggesting there was something fundamentally different between the UFOs and IFOs .

Allan Hendry study

Like the Air Force, astronomer Allan Hendry found that only a small percentage of cases were hoaxes and that most sightings were actually honest misidentifications of prosaic phenomena. Hendry attributed most of these to inexperience or misperception.

Out of 1,307 cases Hendry deemed 88.6% had clear prosaic explanations (IFOs) and only 8.6% were unknowns (UFOs). Of the UFOs, Hendry thought that 7.1%, might still have a prosaic explanation while 1.5% (20 cases) had no possible plausible explanation and were completely unexplained. The remaining miscellaneous cases (2.8%) were “garbage” cases, where Hendry deemed the witnesses unreliable, the reports hopelessly contradictory, or lacking in sufficient information.

Overall, in the three major categories, 42% of all cases had astronomical explanations, 37% were aircraft, and 5% were balloons. A further breakdown allowed 77% to be readily explained by five main classes of objects: 29% were bright stars or planets, 19% were advertising planes, 15% were other aircraft, 9% were meteors and reentering space debris, and 5% were balloons of various types (mostly weather or advertising balloons but also a few prank balloons).

Breakdown of cases

Hendry also used a case classification system developed by his mentor Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who established CUFOS, where the study was carried out. In this summary table:

• NL = “Nocturnal Lights”, lights seen in the sky at night.
• DD = “Daylight Discs”, objects seen in daytime (but not necessarily disc in shape).
• RV = “Radar/Visual” cases, objects observed by both witnesses and radar.
• CE = “Close Encounter” cases. For convenience, CE cases listed below are combined totals of Hynek’s CE1, CE2, and CE3 cases, where:
  • CE1 cases were objects thought to be seen up close (within 500 feet).
  • CE2 had purported physical interactions with the environment (physical trace cases or electromagnetic interference).
  • CE3 cases were supposed to involve sightings of occupants.

Category	NL	DD	CE	RV	Total Cases	Percent
Astronomical
bright stars or planets	360	2	16	2	380	29%
meteors, re-entering man-made spacecraft	113	5	4	0	122	9%
artificial satellites	24	0	0	0	24	2%
moon	22	0	0	0	22	2%
TOTAL (all cases)	519	7	22	2	550	42%
Aircraft
advertising planes	230	0	22	0	252	19%
other aircraft	196	22	6	0	224	17%
missile launches	9	0	1	0	10	0.7%
TOTAL	435	22	29	0	486	37%
balloons	23	35	2	3	63	5%
birds	5	1	0	0	6	0.5%
clouds, dust	10	2	0	0	12	0.9%
light phenomena (mirage, moon dog, ground lights, searchlights, etc.)	9	1	4	0	14	1.1%
other (kites, flares, reflections, windblown debris, etc.)	12	3	1	0	16	1.2%
TOTALS IFOs
Cases	1024	71	58	5	1158	88.6%
Percent	78.3%	5.4%	4.4%	.4%	88.6%
TOTALS UFOs
Cases	79	18	16	0	113	8.6%
Percent	6%	1.4%	1.2%	0%	8.6%
MISC (insufficient information, inconsistent accounts, unreliable witnesses)					36	2.8%
TOTAL all cases
Cases	1103	89	74	5	1307	100%
Percent	84.4%	6.8%	5.7%	0.4%	100%

Analysis

Common causes of misidentification

Both BBSR and Hendry found that the vast majority of IFOs were caused by three classes of objects or phenomena: Astronomical, aircraft, or balloons. Of all IFOs, 86% were accounted for by these three groups in the BBSR study vs. 83% in the Hendry study. However, there were significant differences in the percentages attributed to each group:

• Astronomical: BBSR = 22%; Hendry = 42%. Since BBSR predated satellites, subtracting these out of Hendry’s results leaves 40%. In Hendry’s study, bright stars and planets, like Venus, made up 29% of all cases while meteors (and to a much lesser extent, re-entering space debris) made up 9%.
• Aircraft: BBSR = 22%; Hendry = 37%. The high percentage of military people and pilots in the BBSR study may have something to do with the far lower aircraft misidentification values. Hendry had large numbers of advertising plane misidentifications (19%), perhaps reflecting a study bias toward urban centers, particularly Chicago, where CUFOS is located. Hovering aircraft such as helicopters or blimps, or aircraft that appear to be hovering, such as airplanes seen at night from the front with their headlights on as they approach for landing can often confuse the inexperienced witness, as can aircraft strobe lights.
• Balloons: BBSR = 15%; Hendry = 5%. Possibly the large numbers of big experimental balloons, such as the Skyhook balloon, launched in the period that BBSR studied, contributed to the higher BBSR percentage.

Rare causes of misidentification

• Birds: BBSR = 1%; Hendry = 0.5%
• Light phenomena: BBSR = 2%; Hendry = 1.1%. Might include mirages, moondogs, sundogs, auroras, ground lights such as street lights, and searchlights reflected off of clouds. Extremely rare light phenomena such as possible ball lightning or earthlights may very rarely trigger UFO reports.
• Clouds, dust, fog, etc.: BBSR = 0.4%; Hendry = 0.9%. Might include unusual cloud formations such as lenticular clouds, noctilucent clouds, rainbow effects, and high-altitude ice crystals.
• Other causes: BBSR = 5%; Hendry = 1.2%. Hendry mentioned some of these, such as kites, flares, reflections off windows, and windborn debris.

Some misperceptions

Light distortion from air turbulence can cause celestial bodies to move to a limited degree as can a visual perceptual effect called the autokinetic effect, caused by small, involuntary eye movements after staring at a star-like light against a black background without a frame of reference. To some observers, these may cause stars and planets to appear to start and stop, change direction, or dart around.

Hendry and many skeptics often attribute regular patterns such as “figure eights,” “meandering in a square pattern,” or “falling leaf motion” to these mechanisms and dismiss the sighting as an IFO, but this is far from certain. Movement caused by atmospheric effects or autokinesis is erratic and very limited in range. Therefore, in principle, such effects cannot cause true regular geometric motion such as a square pattern or figure eight, although perhaps those with vivid imaginations may attribute such patterns to random motion. In the case of autokinesis, the effect is very temporary and is destroyed by refixating one’s gaze. Also autokinesis can happen only in the absence of nearby objects. Thus if somebody was viewing a bright object near a visible horizon or in a field of nearby stars, it is very unlikely that autokinesis would be the cause of perceived motion.

Atmospheric distortion also tends to cause motion limited to only few seconds of a degree (causing the familiar twinkling of a star), and autokinesis is typically less than one degree. As Hendry himself noted, very large and prolonged excursions of motion would rule out either mechanism as a suitable explanation.

According to the Hendry, moving clouds may also sometimes confuse observers by creating induced motion. Hendry believes this occasionally makes observers also believe objects have suddenly disappeared or make a rapid departure.

Another type of misperceived motion sometimes occurs when people are driving in a vehicle. Witnesses may believe the “UFO” was following them even though the celestial body was actually stationary. Even police and other normally reliable witnesses can occasionally be fooled by sightings of bright stars and planets.

Similarly, in about 10% of Hendry’s cases caused by celestial bodies, witnesses greatly underestimated distances to the objects, giving distance estimates ranging from 200 feet to 125 miles (60 m to 200 km).

Reentering space debris or meteors may appear as a string of lights. This can occasionally be misinterpreted as lights coming from windows, creating the illusion of a spacecraft. However, such mistakes are actually extremely rare. The effect was first noted in a widely observed 1969 re-entry of a Soviet satellite. The Air Force collected hundreds of reports from witnesses. From these, debunker and astronomer Donald Menzel found three anecdotal cases where witnesses reported the effect. (UFO’s, A Scientific Debate, 155-161). This suggests that perhaps only 1% of all witnesses actually interpret similar events in this way. It is thus a mistake to assert that all reports of elongated objects with windows are due to misidentified meteor trains or space debris.

Venus

Because Venus is the brightest object in the sky (except for the sun and moon) it is frequently misidentified. Contributing to this, Venus is often visible in the early evening and morning sky, and thus seen by many people. Even experienced witnesses, especially when they are in unfamiliar surroundings or atmospheric conditions are unusual, may be confused, at least temporarily.

For example, Astronaut Gordon Cooper, himself a strong advocate of the Extraterrestrial hypothesis, related that he had once been momentarily fooled by the planet Venus when he was a fighter pilot, thinking it a distant enemy plane, and pursued it for several minutes. Other famous cases involving Venus are the Jimmy Carter UFO Incident of 1969 [8] (though the skeptical explanation of Venus is hotly contested, including by Carter himself) and the flying cross chased by two policemen in Devon, England, in 1967[9].

Although there is no doubt that Venus frequently triggers UFO reports, it is often overplayed as a UFO culprit by many skeptics. For example, astronomer Phil Plait claimed that Venus was responsible for a “majority” of all UFO reports (Plait, 205). But the studies cited here do not support this. BBSR attributed only 22% of sightings to astronomical causes of all types, stars, planets, meteors, etc. Venus constituted some unspecified fraction of these. “Certain” astronomical identifications were only 13% of cases (the other 9% of astronomical IDs being “doubtful”), which would further reduce the number of actual “Venus cases.” Hendry attributed a larger 29% of sightings collectively to “bright stars or planets.” Again the fraction believed caused specifically by Venus isn’t broken down, but likely didn’t exceed 20%.

In other cases, some skeptics will claim Venus (or perhaps Jupiter or a bright star) to be responsible for a sighting when they aren’t even visible or are in the wrong part of the sky. An infamous example occurred in August 1965 when the U.S. Air Force tried to explain away widespread sightings in the midwest as bright stars in or near the constellation Orion. However, Orion, a winter constellation, was still well below the horizon at the time, a fact quickly pointed out by some astronomers, and the Air Force was forced to make a hasty retraction. [10][11]

Further, sometimes impossible properties are ascribed to Venus in order to debunk prominent UFO cases. In one famous case, known as the Portage County UFO Chase from 1966, two policemen in their car chased a brilliant UFO for an extended period of time; in the end, seven police officers were involved in the pursuit, and about half a dozen civilians claimed to have seen the same or a similar object. The deputies said the UFO was as clearly defined and metallic, roughly the size of a house when they first saw it up close, bathed them and the surrounding countryside in bright light, and flew directly over them at one point. Another set of policemen saw the initial two officers' car and the UFO approaching rapidly from the west while Venus was in the east. Despite this, the USAF claimed, after a cursory investigation (only one of the police officers and none of the civilians was interviewed) the police chased a satellite and then Venus. [12] (This incident was the inspiration for the police UFO chase in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind). However, in another famous police chase, the "flying cross" UFO of Devon, England, in October 1967, the culprit was definitely identified as Venus.

Conclusions

In many cases, whether an unknown flying object is ultimately called an IFO or UFO is a judgment call of the researchers involved, and thus the proportion of IFOs to UFOs will inevitably fluctuate and their significance will remain controversial. As Hendry himself noted, “Reasonable UFO proponents admit that ‘genuine’ UFO sightings are in the minority, around 10-20%; the skeptics say, ‘If 90% of the reports are IFOs, why not 100%?'"

Fata Morgana and UFOs

Main article: Mirage

File:Fata Morgana as UFO.jpg

Fata Morgana of distant islands distorted images beyond recognition

Fata Morgana might be responsible for some UFO sightings, by displaying objects located below the astronomical horizon hovering in the sky. It might also magnify these objects and make them look absolutely unrecognizable.

The UFOs seen on radars might also be due to Fata Morgana. Official UFO investigations in France indicates:

As is well known, atmospheric ducting is the explanation for certain optical mirages, and in particular the arctic illusion called "fata morgana" where distant ocean or surface ice, which is essentially flat, appears to the viewer in the form of vertical columns and spires, or "castles in the air."
People often assume that mirages occur only rarely. This may be true of optical mirages, but conditions for radar mirages are more common, due to the role played by water vapor which strongly affects the atmospheric refractivity in relation to radio waves. Since clouds are closely associated with high levels of water vapor, optical mirages due to water vapor are often rendered undetectable by the accompanying opaque cloud. On the other hand, radar propagation is essentially unaffected by the water droplets of the cloud so that changes in water vapor content with altitude are very effective in producing atmospheric ducting and radar mirages.

Fata Morgana was named as a hypothesis for the mysterious Australian phenomenon Min Min light

Ufology

Main article: Ufology

Ufology is a neologism describing the collective efforts of those who study UFO reports and associated evidence. While not all UFO researchers believe that all UFOs are necessarily extraterrestrial spacecraft, they do believe the area merits research and that the possibility of extraterrestrial spacecraft should be taken seriously.

Statistics from some scientific studies

An Air Force study by Battelle Memorial Institute scientists from 1952–1955 of 3200 USAF cases found 22% were unknowns, and with the best cases, 33% remained unsolved. Similarly about 30% of the UFO cases studied by the 1969 USAF Condon Committee were deemed unsolved when reviewed by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The official French government UFO scientific study (GEIPAN) from 1976 to 2004 listed about 13% of 5800 cases as detailed yet inexplicable (with 46% deemed to have definite or probable explanations and 41% having inadequate information).

Hypotheses to explain UFOs

There are different opinions about the UFO phenomenon. To account for unsolved UFO cases, several hypotheses have been proposed by both proponents and skeptics. Usually a combination of explanations are invoked to fully explain unknown cases. A few examples are given below:

Among proponents, some of the more common explanations for UFOs are:

• The Extraterrestrial Visitation Hypothesis (ETH): UFOs are alien spacecraft from within our own universe, perhaps nearby stellar systems. This is the most common hypothesis amongst most proponents.
• The Interdimensional Hypothesis: UFOs are objects crossing over from other dimensions or parallel universes
• The Paranormal/Occult Hypothesis: A variant of the Interdimensional Hypothesis, invoked to explain so-called paranormal aspects sometimes associated with UFO reports
• The Time Travel Hypothesis: UFOs are time machines or vehicles from a future Earth, perhaps made by our descendants.
• The Crypto-Archeological Hypothesis: UFOs are built by a previous unknown Earth civilization race of beings, now either hiding on Earth or in nearby space.
• The Nephilim Hypothesis: UFOs are vehicles of the fallen angels, and the UFO experience is a modern variant of what Genesis 6 described, where the abduction result was the soulless Nephilim.

Similarly, skeptics usually propose some of the following explanations:

• The man-made craft hypothesis: UFOs are top secret Russian or American aircraft unfamiliar to most people
• Hoaxes
• The Psychological-Social Hypothesis: What people report is the result of psychological misperception mechanisms and strongly influenced by popular culture on the subject found in books, movies, TV, etc.
• The unknown natural phenomena hypothesis: UFOs represent poorly understood or still unknown natural phenomena, e.g. ball lightning, sprites
• The Meteorological hypothesis: Another unknown natural phenomenon theory–many UFOs or unexplained lights are actually instances of visible combustion of a fuel (e.g., natural gas) inside an atmospheric vortex
• The Earthquake lights/Tectonic Strain hypothesis: UFOs are caused by strains in Earth's crust near earthquake faults, which can also supposedly induce hallucinations

Other skeptical arguments against UFOs include:

Most UFO sightings are transitory events and there is usually no opportunity for the repeat testing called for by the scientific method; this argument is also noted by some mainstream scientists who argue UFOs deserve serious scientific scrutiny.

• Occam's razor of hypothesis testing, since it is considered less incredible for the explanations to be the result of known scientifically verified phenomena rather than resulting from novel mechanisms (e.g. the extraterrestrial hypothesis).

UFO researchers

Main article: List of Ufologists

UFO organizations

Main article: UFO organizations

Physical evidence

Besides visual sightings, cases sometimes have indirect physical evidence, including many cases studied by the military and various government agencies of different countries. Indirect physical evidence would be data obtained from afar, such as radar contact and photographs. More direct physical evidence involves physical interactions with the environment at close range—Hynek's "close encounter" or Vallee's "Type-I" cases—which include "landing traces," electromagnetic interference, and physiological/biological effects.

• Radar contact and tracking, sometimes from multiple sites. These are often considered among the best cases since they usually involve trained military personnel and control tower operators, simultaneous visual sightings, and aircraft intercepts. One such recent example were the mass sightings of large, silent, low-flying black triangles in 1989 and 1990 over Belgium, tracked by multiple NATO radar and jet interceptors, and investigated by Belgium's military (included photographic evidence). Another famous case from 1986 was the JAL 1628 case over Alaska investigated by the FAA.
• Photographic evidence, including still photos, movie film, and video, including some in the infrared spectrum (rare).
• Recorded visual spectrograms
• Recorded gravimetric (example) and magnetic disturbances (extremely rare)
• Landing physical trace evidence, including ground impressions, burned and/or desiccated soil, burned and broken foliage, magnetic anomalies, increased radiation levels, and metallic traces. See, e.g. Height 611 UFO Incident or the 1964 Lonnie Zamora's Socorro, New Mexico encounter, considered one of the most inexplicable of the USAF Project Blue Book cases). A well-known example from December 1980 was the USAF Rendlesham Forest Incident in England. Another less than two weeks later, in January 1981, occurred in Trans-en-Provence and was investigated by GEPAN, then France's official government UFO-investigation agency. Project Blue Book head Edward J. Ruppelt described a classic 1952 CE2 case involving a patch of charred grass roots. Catalogs of several thousand such cases have been compiled, particularly by researcher Ted Phillips.
• Physiological effects on people and animals including temporary paralysis, skin burns and rashes, corneal burns, and symptoms superficially resembling radiation poisoning, such as the Cash-Landrum incident in 1980. One such case dates back to 1886, a Venezuelan incident reported in Scientific American magazine.
• Animal/cattle mutilation cases, that some feel are also part of the UFO phenomenon. Such cases can and have been analyzed using forensic science techniques.
• Biological effects on plants such as increased or decreased growth, germination effects on seeds, and blown-out stem nodes (usually associated with physical trace cases or crop circles)
• Electromagnetic interference (EM) effects, including stalled cars, power black-outs, radio/TV interference, magnetic compass deflections, and aircraft navigation, communication, and engine disruption. A list of over 30 such aircraft EM incidents was compiled by NASA scientist Dr. Richard F. Haines. A famous 1976 military case over Tehran, recorded in CIA and DIA classified documents, resulted in communication losses in multiple aircraft and weapons system failure in an F-4 Phantom II jet interceptor as it was about to fire a missile on one of the UFOs. This was also a radar/visual case.
• Remote radiation detection, some noted in FBI and CIA documents occurring over government nuclear installations at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1950, also reported by Project Blue Book director Ed Ruppelt in his book.
• Actual hard physical evidence cases, such as 1957, Ubatuba, Brazil, magnesium fragments analyzed by the Brazilian government and in the Condon Report and by others. The 1964 Socorro/Lonnie Zamora incident also left metal traces, analyzed by NASA.
• Misc: Recorded electromagnetic emissions, such as microwaves detected in the well-known 1957 RB-47 surveillance aircraft case, which was also a visual and radar case; polarization rings observed around a UFO by a scientist, explained by Dr. James Harder as intense magnetic fields from the UFO causing the Faraday effect.

These various reported physical evidence cases have been studied by various scientist and engineers, both privately and in official governmental studies (such as Project Blue Book, the Condon Committee, and the French GEPAN/SEPRA). A comprehensive scientific review of physical evidence cases was carried out by the 1998 Sturrock UFO panel.

Reverse engineering

Attempts have been made to reverse engineer the possible physics behind UFOs through analysis of both eyewitness reports and the physical evidence. Examples are former NASA and nuclear engineer James McCampbell in his book Ufology, NACA/NASA engineer Paul R. Hill in his book Unconventional Flying Objects, and German rocketry pioneer Hermann Oberth. Among subjects tackled by McCampbell, Hill, and Oberth was the question of how UFOs can fly at supersonic speeds without creating a sonic boom. McCampbell's proposed solution of a microwave plasma parting the air in front of the craft is currently being researched by Dr. Leik Myrabo, Professor of Engineering Physics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as a possible advance in hypersonic flight. In contrast, Hill and Oberth believed UFOs utilize an as yet unknown anti-gravity field to accomplish the same thing as well as provide propulsion and protection of occupants from the effects of high acceleration.

Famous hoaxes

• The Maury Island Incident
• The Ummo affair, a decades-long series of detailed letters and documents allegedly from extraterrestrials. The total length of the documents is at least 1000 pages, and some estimate that further undiscovered documents may total nearly 4000 pages. A Jose Luis Jordan Pena came forward in the early nineties claiming responsibility for the phenomenon, and most consider there to be little reason to challenge his claims.
• George Adamski over the space of two decades made various claims about his meetings with telepathic aliens from nearby planets. He claimed that photographs of the far side of the moon taken by a Soviet orbital probe in 1959 were fake, and that there were cities, trees and snow-capped mountains on the far side of the moon.
• In 1987 Ed Walters perpetrated a hoax in Gulf Breeze, Florida. Walters claimed at first having seen a small UFO flying near his home, and then in a second incident seeing the same UFO and a small alien being standing by his back door after being alerted by his dog. Several photographs were taken of the craft, but none of the being. Three years later, in 1990, after the Walters family had moved, the new residents discovered a model of a UFO poorly hidden in the attic that bore an undeniable resemblance to the craft in Walters' photographs. Various witnesses and detractors came forward after the local Pensacola newspaper printed a story about the discovered model, and some investigators now consider the sightings to be a hoax. In addition, a six-figure television miniseries and book deal were nearly struck with Walters.
• Warren William (Billy) Smith, A popular writer and confessed hoaxster.

Investigation and responses

Some studies show that after investigation, the majority of UFOs are usually identified (see identified flying object). For example, a 1979 study by CUFOS researcher Allan Hendry found that up to 91.4% of the reports he investigated were either identifiable (91.4%) or could possibly be attributable (7.1%) to known artificial objects and natural phenomena. Hendry's figure for unidentified cases is considerably lower than many official UFO studies such as Project Blue Book or the Condon Report which found unidentified cases made up 6% and 30% of reports respectively.

UFOs have been subject to various investigations over the years, varying widely in scope and scientific rigor. Governments or independent academics in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, and the Soviet Union are known to have investigated UFO reports at various times.

Among the best known government studies are Project Blue Book, previously Project Sign and Project Grudge, conducted by the United States Air Force from 1947 until 1969, the secret U.S. Army/Air Force Project Twinkle investigation into green fireballs (1948–1951), and Brazilian Air Force Operation Saucer (1977). Major civilian UFO groups in the U.S that have conducted extensive investigations were/are NICAP, APRO, MUFON, and CUFOS.

American investigations

Starting July 9, 1947 Army Air Force (AAF) intelligence, in cooperation with the FBI, began a formal investigation into selected sightings with characteristics that could not be immediately rationalized, which included Arnold’s and the United crew’s. The AAF used "all of its scientists" to determine whether or not "such a phenomenon could, in fact, occur". The research was "being conducted with the thought that the flying objects might be a celestial phenomenon," or that "they might be a foreign body mechanically devised and controlled." Three weeks later in a preliminary defense estimate, the air force investigation decided that, "This ‘flying saucer’ situation is not all imaginary or seeing too much in some natural phenomenon. Something is really flying around."

A further review by the intelligence and technical divisions of the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field reached the same conclusion, that "the phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious," that there were objects in the shape of a disc, metallic in appearance, and as big as man-made aircraft. They were characterized by "extreme rates of climb [and] maneuverability," general lack of noise, absence of trail, occasional formation flying, and "evasive" behavior "when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar," suggesting a controlled craft. It was thus recommended in late September 1947 that an official Air Force investigation be set up to investigate the phenomenon.

This led to the creation of the Air Force’s Project Sign at the end of 1947, one of the earliest government studies to come to a secret ETH conclusion. In August 1948, Sign investigators wrote a top-secret intelligence estimate to that effect. The Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg ordered it destroyed. The existence of this suppressed report was revealed by several insiders who had read it, such as astronomer and USAF consultant Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Edward J. Ruppelt, the first head of the USAF's Project Blue Book. (Ruppelt, Chapt. 3)

Project Sign was dismantled and became Project Grudge at the end of 1948, and then Project Blue Book In 1952. Blue Book closed down in 1970, ending the official Air Force UFO investigations. However, a 1969 USAF document, known as the Bolender memo, plus later government documents revealed that nonpublic U.S. government UFO investigations continued after 1970. The Bollender memo first stated that "reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security... are not part of the Blue Book system," indicating that more serious UFO incidents were already handled outside of the public Blue Book investigation. The memo then added, "reports of UFOs which could affect national security would continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedures designed for this purpose."

An early U.S. Army study, of which little is known, was called the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (IPU). In 1987, British UFO researcher Timothy Good received a letter confirming the existence of the IPU from the Army Director of Counter-intelligence, in which it was stated, "...the aforementioned Army unit was disestablished during the late 1950s and never reactivated. All records pertaining to this unit were surrendered to the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations in conjunction with operation BLUEBOOK." The IPU records have never been released.

Use of UFO instead of flying saucer was first suggested in 1952 by Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, the first director of Project Blue Book, who felt that flying saucer did not reflect the diversity of the sightings. Ruppelt suggested that UFO should be pronounced as a word — you-foe. However it is generally pronounced by forming each letter: U.F.O. His term was quickly adopted by the Air Force, which also briefly used "UFOB" circa 1954, for Unidentified Flying Object. Ruppelt recounted his experiences with Project Blue Book in his memoir, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1956), also the first book to use the term.

Air Force Regulation 200-2, issued in 1954, defined an Unidentified Flying Object (UFOB) as "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." The regulation also said UFOBs were to be investigated as a "possible threat to the security of the United States" and "to determine technical aspects involved." As with any then-ongoing investigation, Air Force personnel did not discuss the investigation with the press.

Well known American investigations include:

• Project Blue Book, previously Project Sign and Project Grudge, conducted by the United States Air Force from 1947 until 1969
• The secret U.S. Army/Air Force Project Twinkle investigation into green fireballs (1948–1951)
• Ghost rockets investigations by the Swedish, U.K., U.S., and Greek militaries (1946–1947)
• The secret CIA Robertson Panel (1953)
• The secret USAF Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 by the Battelle Memorial Institute (1951–1954)
• The Brookings Report (1960), commissioned by NASA
• The public Condon Committee (1966–1968)
• The private Sturrock Panel (1998)

Canadian investigation

File:Falcon Lake Incident 2.jpg

The Falcon Lake incident report filed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Stephen Michalak claimed incident with a UFO.

In Canada, the Department of National Defence has dealt with reports, sightings and investigations of UFOs across Canada. In addition to conducting investigations into crop circles in Duhamel, Alberta, it still identifies the Falcon Lake incident in Manitoba and the Shag Harbour incident in Nova Scotia as "unsolved".

The Canadian studies include Project Magnet (1950–1954) and Project Second Story (1952–1954)

French investigation

Template:Wikinews2 In March 2007, the French Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) published an archive of UFO sightings and other phenomena online.

French studies include GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN (1977–), within the French space agency CNES, the longest ongoing government-sponsored investigation, and the private French COMETA panel (1996–1999)

British investigation

The UK conducted various investigations into UFO sightings and related stories. The contents of some of these investigations have since been released to the public.

Eight file collections on UFO sightings, dating from 1978 to 1987, were first released on May 14, 2008, to the UK National Archives by the Ministry of Defence. Although kept secret from the public for many years, most of the files have low levels of classification and none is classified Top Secret. 200 files are set to be made public by 2012. The files are correspondence from the public sent to government officials, such as the MoD and Margaret Thatcher. The MoD released the files under the Freedom of Information Act due to requests from researchers. These files include, but are not limited to, UFOs over Liverpool and the Waterloo Bridge in London.

On October 20, 2008 more UFO files were released. One case released detailed that in 1991 an Alitalia passenger aircraft was approaching Heathrow Airport when the pilots saw what they described as a "cruise missile" flew extremely close to the cockpit. The pilots believed that a collision was imminent. UFO expert Dr David Clarke says that this is one of the most convincing cases for a UFO he has come across.

British investigations include The UK's Flying Saucer Working Party. Its final report, published in 1951, remained secret for over 50 years. The Working Party concluded that all UFO sightings could be explained as misidentifications of ordinary objects or phenomena, optical illusions, psychological delusions or hoaxes. The report stated: ‘We accordingly recommend very strongly that no further investigation of reported mysterious aerial phenomena be undertaken, unless and until some material evidence becomes available’. Another notable investigation was Project Condign (1997–2000)

A secret study of UFOs undertaken for the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) between 1996 and 2000 and was publicly released in 2006. The report is titled "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Defence Region" and was code-named Project Condign. The report confirmed earlier findings that the main causes of UFO sightings are misidentification of man-made and natural objects. The report noted: "No artefacts of unknown or unexplained origin have been reported or handed to the UK authorities, despite thousands of UAP reports. There are no SIGINT, ELINT or radiation measurements and little useful video or still IMINT." It concluded: "There is no evidence that any UAP, seen in the UKADR [UK Air Defence Region], are incursions by air-objects of any intelligent (extraterrestrial or foreign) origin, or that they represent any hostile intent." In contrast to the official government position, Nick Pope, the head of the UK government UFO desk for a number of years, is an advocate of the ETH, based on the inexplicable (to him) cases he reviewed, such as the Rendlesham UFO incident and the so-called Cosford Incident.

Other

The Air Force's Project Blue Book files indicate that approximately 1% of all unknown reports came from amateur and professional astronomers or other users of telescopes (such as missile trackers or surveyors). In the 1970s, astrophysicist Peter A. Sturrock conducted two surveys of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and American Astronomical Society. About 5% of the members polled indicated that they had had UFO sightings. In 1980, a survey of 1800 members of various amateur astronomer associations by Gert Helb and astronomer J. Allen Hynek of the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) found that 24% responded "yes" to the question "Have you ever observed an object which resisted your most exhaustive efforts at identification?"

Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who admitted to six UFO sightings, including three green fireballs supported the Extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) for UFOs and stated he thought scientists who dismissed it without study were being "unscientific." Another astronomer was Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, who had headed the Air Force's investigation into the green fireballs and other UFO phenomena in New Mexico. LaPaz reported two personal sightings, one of a green fireball, the other of an anomalous disc-like object. Even later UFO debunker Dr. Donald Menzel filed a UFO report in 1949.

Some studies were neutral in their conclusions, but argued the inexplicable core cases called for continued scientific study. Examples are the Sturrock Panel study of 1998 and the 1970 AIAA review of the Condon Report. Other private or governmental studies, some secret, have concluded in favor of the ETH, or have had members who disagreed with the official conclusions. The following are examples of such studies and individuals:

• In 1967, Greek physicist Paul Santorini, a Manhattan Project scientist, publicly stated that a 1947 Greek government investigation that he headed into the European Ghost rockets of 1946 quickly concluded that they were not missiles. Santorini claimed the investigation was then quashed by military officials from the U.S., who knew them to be extraterrestrial, because there was no defense against the advanced technology and they feared widespread panic should the results become public.

November 1948 USAF Top Secret document citing extraterrestrial opinion

• A 1948 Top Secret USAF Europe document (at right) states that Swedish air intelligence informed them that at least some of their investigators into the ghost rockets and flying saucers concluded they had extraterrestrial origins: "...Flying saucers have been reported by so many sources and from such a variety of places that we are convinced that they cannot be disregarded and must be explained on some basis which is perhaps slightly beyond the scope of our present intelligence thinking. When officers of this Directorate recently visited the Swedish Air Intelligence Service... their answer was that some reliable and fully technically qualified people have reached the conclusion that 'these phenomena are obviously the result of a high technical skill which cannot be credited to any presently known culture on earth.' They are therefore assuming that these objects originate from some previously unknown or unidentified technology, possibly outside the earth."
• West Germany, in conjunction with other European countries, conducted a secret study from 1951 to 1954, also concluding that UFOs were extraterrestrial. This study was revealed by German rocketry pioneer Hermann Oberth, who headed the study and who also made many public statements supporting the ETH in succeeding years. At the study's conclusion in 1954, Oberth declared, "These objects (UFOs) are conceived and directed by intelligent beings of a very high order. They do not originate in our solar system, perhaps not in our galaxy."
• An FBI field office letter to the FBI Director, dated January 31, 1949, stated "...the matter of 'Unidentified Aircraft' or 'Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,' otherwise known as 'Flying Discs,' 'Flying Saucers,' and 'Balls of Fire' ...is considered Top Secret by Intelligence Officers of both the Army and Air Forces." (emphasis included in original).
• During the height of the flying saucer "flap" of July 1952, including highly publicized radar/visual and jet intercepts over Washington, D.C., the FBI was informed by the Air Force Directorate of Intelligence that they thought the "flying saucers" were either "optical illusions or atmospheric phenomena" but then added that, "some Military officials are seriously considering the possibility of interplanetary ships."
• The CIA started their own internal scientific review the following day. Some CIA scientists were also seriously considering the ETH. An early memo from August was very skeptical, but also added, "...as long as a series of reports remains 'unexplainable' (interplanetary aspects and alien origin not being thoroughly excluded from consideration) caution requires that intelligence continue coverage of the subject." A report from later that month was similarly skeptical but nevertheless concluded "...sightings of UFOs reported at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge, at a time when the background radiation count had risen inexplicably. Here we run out of even 'blue yonder' explanations that might be tenable, and we still are left with numbers of incredible reports from credible observers." A December 1952 memo from the Assistant CIA Director of Scientific Intelligence (O/SI) was much more urgent: "...the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention. Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at highs speeds in the vicinity of U.S. defense installation are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles." Some of the memos also made it clear that CIA interest in the subject was not to be made public, partly in fear of possible public panic. (Good, 331–335)
• The CIA organized the January 1953 Robertson Panel of scientists to debunk the data collected by the Air Force's Project Blue Book. This included an engineering analysis of UFO maneuvers by Blue Book (including a motion picture film analysis by Naval scientists) that had concluded UFOs were under intelligent control and likely extraterrestrial.
• Extraterrestrial "believers" within Project Blue Book including Major Dewey Fournet, in charge of the engineering analysis of UFO motion. Director Edward J. Ruppelt is also thought to have held these views, though expressed in private, not public. Another defector from the official Air Force party line was consultant Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who started out as a staunch skeptic. After 20 years of investigation, he changed positions and generally supported the ETH. He became the most publicly known UFO advocate scientist in the 1970s and 1980s.
• The first CIA Director, Vice Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, stated in a signed statement to Congress, also reported in the New York Times, February 28, 1960, "It is time for the truth to be brought out... Behind the scenes high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. However, through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense... I urge immediate Congressional action to reduce the dangers from secrecy about unidentified flying objects." In 1962, in his letter of resignation from NICAP, he told director Donald Keyhoe, "I know the UFOs are not U.S. or Soviet devices. All we can do now is wait for some actions by the UFOs."
• Although the 1968 Condon Report came to a negative conclusion (written by Condon), it is known that many members of the study strongly disagreed with Condon's methods and biases. Most quit the project in disgust or were fired for insubordination. A few became ETH supporters. Perhaps the best known example is Dr. David Saunders, who in his 1968 book UFOs? Yes lambasted Condon for extreme bias and ignoring or misrepresenting critical evidence. Saunders wrote, "It is clear... that the sightings have been going on for too long to explain in terms of straightforward terrestrial intelligence. It's in this sense that ETI (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) stands as the `least implausible' explanation of `real UFOs'."
• Jean-Jacques Velasco, the head of the official French UFO investigation SEPRA, wrote a book in 2005 saying that 14% of the 5800 cases studied by SEPRA were utterly inexplicable and extraterrestrial in origin. Yves Sillard, the head of the new official French UFO investigation GEIPAN and former head of the French space agency CNES, echoes Velasco's comments and adds the U.S. is guilty of covering up this information. Again, this isn't the official public posture of SEPRA, CNES, or the French government. (CNES recently placed their 5800 case files on the Internet starting March 2007.)
• The 1999 French COMETA committee of high-level military analysts/generals and aerospace engineers/scientists declared the ETH was the best hypothesis for the unexplained cases.

National Press Club press conference on November 12, 2007

On November 12, 2007, Former Arizona Governor Fife Symington moderated a panel of former high-ranking government, aviation and military officials from seven countries at the National Press Club; discussing the UFO topic and governmental investigations. The press conference was open for credentialed media and congressional staff only.

UFO categorization

Some researchers recommend that observations be classified according to the features of the phenomenon or object that are reported or recorded. Typical categories include:

• Saucer, toy-top, or disk-shaped "craft" without visible or audible propulsion. (day and night)
• Large triangular "craft" or triangular light pattern
• Cigar-shaped "craft" with lighted windows (Meteor fireballs are sometimes reported this way, but are very different phenomena).
• Other: chevrons, (equilateral) triangles, crescent, boomerangs, spheres (usually reported to be shining, glowing at night), domes, diamonds, shapeless black masses, eggs, pyramids and cylinders, classic "lights".

Hynek system

Dr. J. Allen Hynek developed another system of description, dividing sightings into six categories.

It first separates sightings based on proximity, arbitrarily using 500 feet as the cutoff point. It then subdivides these into divisions based on viewing conditions or special features. The three distant sighting categories are:

• Nocturnal Lights (NL): Anomalous lights seen in the night sky.
• Daylight Discs (DD): Any anomalous object, generally but not necessarily "discoidal", seen in the distant daytime sky.
• Radar/Visual cases (RV). Objects seen simultaneously by eye and on radar.

The distant classification is useful in terms of evidentiary value, with RV cases usually considered to be the highest because of radar corroboration and NL cases the lowest because of the ease in which lights seen at night are often confused with prosaic phenomena such as meteors, bright stars, or airplanes. RV reports are also fewest in number, while NL are largest.

In addition were three "close encounter" (CE) subcategories, again thought to be higher in evidentiary value, because it includes measurable physical effects and the objects seen up close are less likely to be the result of misperception. As in RV cases, these tend to be relatively rare:

• CE1: Strange objects seen nearby but without physical interaction with the environment.
• CE2: A CE1 case but creating physical evidence or causing electromagnetic interference (see below).
• CE3: CE1 or CE2 cases where "occupants" or entities are seen. (Hence the title of Steven Spielberg's movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind)

Hynek's CE classification system has since been expanded to include such things as alleged alien abductions (CE4s) and cattle mutilation phenomena, military and civilians being attacked by UFOs, civilians and/or military attacking UFOs and alleged aliens.

Vallee system

Jacques Vallee has devised a UFO classification system which is preferred by many UFO investigators over Hynek's system as it is considerably more descriptive than Hynek's, especially in terms of the reported behavior of UFOs.

Type I (a, b, c, d): Observation of an unusual object, spherical discoidal, or of another geometry, on or situated close to the ground (tree height, or lower), which may be associated with traces – thermal, luminous, or mechanical effects.

1. On or near ground.
2. Near or over body of water.
3. Occupants appear to display interest in witnesses by gestures or luminous signals.
4. Object appears to be "scouting" a terrestrial vehicle.

Type II (a, b, c): Observation of an unusual object with vertical cylindrical formation in the sky, associated with a diffuse cloud. This phenomenon has been given various names such as "cloud-cigar" or "cloud-sphere."

1. Moving erratically through the sky.
2. Object is stationary and gives rise to secondary objects (sometimes referred to as "satellite objects").
3. Object is surrounded by secondary objects.

Type III (a, b, c, d, e): Observation of an unusual object of spherical, discoidal or elliptical shape, stationary in the sky.

1. Hovering between two periods of motion with "falling-leaf" descent, up and down, or pendulum motion.
2. Interruption of continuous flight to hover and then continue motion.
3. Alters appearance while hovering – e.g., change of luminosity, generation of secondary object, etc.
4. "Dogfights" or swarming among several objects.
5. Trajectory abruptly altered during continuous flight to fly slowly above a certain area, circle, or suddenly change course.

Type IV (a, b, c, d): Observation of an unusual object in continuous flight.

1. Continuous flight.
2. Trajectory affected by nearby conventional aircraft.
3. Formation flight.
4. Wavy or zig-zag trajectory.

Type V (a, b, c): Observation of an unusual object of indistinct appearance, i.e., appearing to be not fully material or solid in structure.

1. Extended apparent diameter, non-point source luminous objects ("fuzzy").
2. Starlike objects (point source), motionless for extended periods.
3. Starlike objects rapidly crossing the sky, possibly with peculiar trajectories.

Source: 1. Jacques and Janine Vallee: Challenge To Science: The UFO Enigma, LC# 66-25843

Conspiracy theories

Main article: UFO conspiracy theory

UFOs are sometimes an element of elaborate conspiracy theories in which governments are said to be intentionally covering up the existence of aliens, or sometimes collaborating with them. There are many versions of this story; some are exclusive, while others overlap with various other conspiracy theories.

In the U.S., opinion polls again indicate that a strong majority of people believe the U.S. government is withholding such information. Various notables have also expressed such views. Some examples are astronauts Gordon Cooper and Edgar Mitchell, Senator Barry Goldwater, Vice Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter (the first CIA director), Lord Hill-Norton (former British Chief of Defense Staff and NATO head), the 1999 high-level French COMETA report by various French generals and aerospace experts, and Yves Sillard (former director of the French space agency CNES, new director of French UFO research organization GEIPAN).

There is also speculation that UFO phenomena are tests of experimental aircraft or advanced weapons. In this case UFOs are viewed as failures to retain secrecy, or deliberate attempts at misinformation: to deride the phenomenon so that it can be pursued unhindered. This explanation may or may not feed back into the previous one, where current advanced military technology is considered to be adapted alien technology (see also: skunk works and Area 51).

It has also been suggested by a few paranormal authors that all or most human technology and culture is based on extraterrestrial contact. See also ancient astronauts.

Allegations of evidence suppression

Some also contend regarding physical evidence that it exists abundantly but is swiftly and sometimes clumsily suppressed by governments, aiming to insulate a population they regard as unprepared for the social, theological, and security implications of such evidence. See the Brookings Report.

There have been allegations of suppression of UFO related evidence for many decades. There are also conspiracy theories which claim that physical evidence might have been removed and/or destroyed/suppressed by some governments. (See also Men in Black) Some examples are:

• On July 7, 1947, William Rhodes took photos of an unusual object over Phoenix, Arizona. The photos appeared in a Phoenix newspaper and a few other papers. According to documents from Project Bluebook, an Army counter-intelligence (CIC) agent and an FBI agent interviewed Rhodes on August 29 and convinced him to surrender the negatives. The CIC agent deliberately concealed his true identity, leaving Rhodes to believe both men were from the FBI. Rhodes said he wanted the negatives back, but when he turned them into the FBI the next day, he was informed he wouldn't be getting them back, though Rhodes later tried unsuccessfully. The photos were extensively analyzed and would eventually show up in some classified Air Force UFO intelligence reports. (Randle, 34–45, full account)
• A June 27, 1950, movie of a "flying disk" over Louisville, Kentucky, taken by a Louisville Courier-Journal photographer, had the USAF Directors of counterintelligence (AFOSI) and intelligence discussing in memos how to best obtain the movie and interview the photographer without revealing Air Force interest. One memo suggested the FBI be used, then precluded the FBI getting involved. Another memo said "it would be nice if OSI could arrange to secure a copy of the film in some covert manner," but if that wasn't feasible, one of the Air Force scientists might have to negotiate directly with the newspaper. In a recent interview, the photographer confirmed meeting with military intelligence and still having the film in his possession until then, but refused to say what happened to the film after that.
• In another 1950 movie incident from Montana, Nicholas Mariana filmed some unusual aerial objects and eventually turned the film over to the U.S. Air Force, but insisted that the first part of the film, clearly showing the objects as spinning discs, had been removed when it was returned to him. (Clark, 398)
• During the military investigation of green fireballs in New Mexico, UFOs were photographed by a tracking camera over White Sands Proving Grounds on April 27, 1949. The final report in 1951 on the green fireball investigation claimed there was insufficient data to determine anything. However, documents later uncovered by Dr. Bruce Maccabee indicate that triangulation was accomplished. The data reduction and photographs showed four objects about 30 feet in diameter flying in formation at high speed at an altitude of about 30 miles. Maccabee says this result was apparently suppressed from the final report.
• Project Blue Book director Edward J. Ruppelt reported that, in 1952, a U.S. Air Force pilot fired his jet's machine guns at a UFO, and that the official report which should have been sent to Blue Book was quashed.
• Astronaut Gordon Cooper reported suppression of a flying saucer movie filmed in high clarity by two Edwards AFB range photographers on May 3, 1957. Cooper said he viewed developed negatives of the object, clearly showing a dish-like object with a dome on top and something like holes or ports in the dome. The photographers and another witness, when later interviewed by Dr. James McDonald, confirmed the story. Cooper said military authorities then picked up the film and neither he nor the photographers ever heard what happened to it. The incident was also reported in a few newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times. The official explanation, however, was that the photographers had filmed a weather balloon distorted by hot desert air.
• On January 22, 1958, when NICAP director Donald Keyhoe appeared on CBS television, his statements on UFOs were pre-censored by the Air Force. During the show when Keyhoe tried to depart from the censored script to "reveal something that has never been disclosed before," CBS cut the sound, later stating Keyhoe was about to violate "predetermined security standards" and about to say something he wasn't "authorized to release." What Keyhoe was about to reveal were four publicly unknown military studies concluding UFOs were interplanetary (including the 1948 Project Sign Estimate of the Situation and Blue Book's 1952 engineering analysis of UFO motion). (Good, 286–287; Dolan 293–295)
• Astronomer Jacques Vallee reported that in 1961 he witnessed the destruction of the tracking tapes of unknown objects orbiting the Earth. (However, Vallee indicated that this didn't happen because of government pressure but because the senior astronomers involved didn't want to deal with the implications.)
• In 1965, Rex Heflin took four Polaroid photos of a hat-shaped object. Two years later (1967), two men posing as NORAD agents confiscated three prints. Just as mysteriously, the photos were returned to his mailbox in 1993.
• A March 1, 1967 memo directed to all USAF divisions, from USAF Lt. General Hewitt Wheless, Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, stated that unverified information indicated that unknown individuals, impersonating USAF officers and other military personnel, had been harassing civilian UFO witnesses, warning them not to talk, and also confiscating film, referring specifically to the Heflin incident. AFOSI was to be notified if any personnel were to become aware of any other incidents. (Document in Fawcett & Greenwood, 236).
• John Callahan, former Division Chief of the Accidents and Investigations Branch of the FAA, Washington D.C., also a Disclosure Project witness, said that following a 1986 encounter of a Japanese airlines 747 with a giant UFO over Alaska, recorded by air and ground radar, the FAA conducted an investigation. Callahan held a briefing a few days later for President Reagan's Scientific Study Group, the FBI, and CIA. After the briefing, one of the CIA agents told everybody they "were never there and this never happened," adding they were fearful of public panic.
• In 1996, the CIA revealed an instance from 1964 where two CIA agents posed as USAF representatives in order to recover a film canister from a Corona spy satellite that had accidentally come down in Venezuela. The event was then publicly dismissed as an unsuccessful NASA space experiment.

UFOs in popular culture

Main article: UFOs in Fiction

UFOs constitute a widespread international cultural phenomenon of the last half-century. Gallup polls rank UFOs near the top of lists for subjects of widespread recognition. In 1973, a survey found that 95 percent of the public reported having heard of UFOs, whereas only 92 percent had heard of US President Gerald Ford in a 1977 poll taken just nine months after he left the White House. (Bullard, 141) A 1996 Gallup poll reported that 71 percent of the United States population believed that the government was covering up information regarding UFOs. A 2002 Roper poll for the Sci Fi channel found similar results, but with more people believing UFOs were extraterrestrial craft. In that latest poll, 56 percent thought UFOs were real craft and 48 percent that aliens had visited the Earth. Again, about 70 percent felt the government was not sharing everything it knew about UFOs or extraterrestrial life. Another effect of the flying saucer type of UFO sightings has been Earth-made flying saucer craft in space fiction, for example the Earth-made craft Starship C-57D in Forbidden Planet, and the saucer part of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek And many others. For an excellent analysis of the interrelationship between popular culture and UFOs consult the research by psychologist Armando Simon, especially his contribution in Richard Haines' book, UFO Phenomena and the Behavioral Scientist.

Use in film and television

• See List of major UFO film and television shows

Use in Music

• See Ufoetry

See also

Abduction phenomenon Ball lightning Black triangle (UFO) Bob Lazar Brookings Report Carl Sagan Cattle mutilation

Condon Report Contactees Crop circle Extraterrestrial life Flying rod Foo fighter Forteana

Hessdalen light Jacques Vallée John Keel Kenneth Arnold Kodiak Island UFO, 2007 List of U.S. paranormal guides Magazines of anomalous phenomena

Mutual UFO Network Ralph Horton flying saucer crash Robertson Panel Roswell incident Scientific skepticism The Disclosure Project UFOs in fiction

Unidentified submerged object Unusual ground marking Valentich Disappearance Vimana Westall High School UFO

References

General

• Thomas E. Bullard, "UFOs: Lost in the Myths", pages 141–191 in "UFOs, the Military, and the Early Cold War Era", pages 82–121 in "UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge" David M. Jacobs, editor; 2000, University Press of Kansas, ISBN 0-7006-1032-4
• Jerome Clark, The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial, 1998, Visible Ink Press, ISBN 1-57859-029-9. Many classic cases and UFO history provided in great detail; highly documented.
• J. Deardorff, B. Haisch, B. Maccabee, Harold E. Puthoff (2005). "Inflation-Theory Implications for Extraterrestrial Visitation" (PDF). Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. 58: 43–50.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Curran, Douglas. In Advance of the Landing: Folk Concepts of Outer Space. (revised edition), Abbeville Press, 2001. ISBN 0-7892-0708-7. Non-sensational but fair treatment of contemporary UFO legend and lore in N. America, including the so-called "contactee cults." The author traveled the United States with his camera and tape recorder and directly interviewed many individuals.
• Hall, Richard H., editor. The UFO Evidence: Volume 1. 1964, NICAP, reissued 1997, Barnes & Noble Books, ISBN 0-7607-0627-1. Well-organized, exhaustive summary and analysis of 746 unexplained NICAP cases out of 5000 total cases — a classic.
• Hall, Richard H. The UFO Evidence: A Thirty-Year Report. Scarecrow Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8108-3881-8. Another exhaustive case study, more recent UFO reports.
• Hendry, Alan. The UFO Handbook: A Guide to Investigating, Evaluating, and Reporting UFO Sightings. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1979. ISBN 0-385-14348-6. Skeptical but balanced analysis of 1300 CUFOS UFO cases.
• Hynek, J. Allen. The UFO Experience: A scientific inquiry. Henry Regnery Co., 1972.
• Hynek, J. Allen. The Hynek UFO Report. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1997. ISBN 0-7607-0429-5. Analysis of 640 high-quality cases through 1969 by UFO legend Hynek.
• Rose, Bill and Buttler, Tony. Flying Saucer Aircraft (Secret Projects). Leicester, UK: Midland Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1-85780-233-0.
• Sagan, Carl & Page. Thornton, editors. UFOs: A Scientific Debate. \Cornell University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-7607-0192-2. Pro and con articles by scientists, mostly to the skeptical side.
• Sheaffer, Robert The UFO Verdict: Examining the Evidence, 1986, Prometheus Books ISBN 0-87975-338-2
• Sheaffer, Robert UFO Sightings: The Evidence, 1998, Prometheus Books, ISBN 1-57392-213-7 (revised edition of The UFO Verdict)
• Sturrock, Peter A. (1999). The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence. New York: Warner Books. ISBN 0-446-52565-0
• Canada's Unidentified Flying Objects: The Search for the Unknown, a virtual museum exhibition at Library and Archives Canada

Skepticism

• Philip Plait (2002). Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax". John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-40976-6. (Chapter 20: Misidentified Flying Objects: UFOs and Illusions of the Mind and Eye.)
• Ian Ridpath "Astronomical Causes of UFOs"[13]
• Michael A. Seeds. (1995). Horizons: Exploring the Universe, Wadsworth Publishing, ISBN 0-534-24889-6 and ISBN 0-534-24890-X. (Appendix A)

Psychology

• Carl G. Jung, "Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies" (translated by R.F.C. Hull); 1979, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-01822-7
• Armando Simon,A Nonreactive, Quantitative Study of Mass Behavior with Emphasis on the Cinema as Behavior Catalyst," Psychological Reports, 1981, 48, 775-785.
• Richard Haines"UFO Phenomena and the Behavioral Scientist." Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1979.
• Armando Simon "UFOs: Testing for the Existence of Air Force Censorship." Psychology, 1976, 13, 3-5.
• Armando Simon "Psychology and the UFOs." The Skeptical Inquirer. 1984, 8, 355-367.

Histories

• Richard M. Dolan, UFOs and the National Security State: An Unclassified History, Volume One: 1941–1973, 2000, Keyhole Publishing, ISBN 0-9666885-0-3. Dolan is a professional historian.
• Downes, Jonathan Rising of the Moon. 2nd ed. Bangor: Xiphos, 2005.
• Lawrence Fawcett & Barry J. Greenwood, The UFO Cover-Up (Originally Clear Intent), 1992, Fireside Books (Simon & Schuster), ISBN 0-671-76555-8. Many UFO documents.
• Timothy Good, Above Top Secret, 1988, William Morrow & Co., ISBN 0-688-09202-0. Many UFO documents.
• Timothy Good, Need to Know: UFOs, the Military, and Intelligence, 2007, Pegasus Books, ISBN 978-1-933648-38-5. Update of Above Top Secret with new cases and documents
• Bruce Maccabee, UFO FBI Connection, 2000, Llewellyn Publications, ISBN 1-56718-493-6
• Kevin Randle, Project Blue Book Exposed, 1997, Marlowe & Company, ISBN 1-56924-746-3
• Edward J. Ruppelt, The Report On Unidentified Flying Objects, 1956, Doubleday & Co. online. A UFO classic by insider Ruppelt, the first head of the USAF Project Blue Book
• LeRoy F. Pea, Government Involvement in the UFO Coverup, or earlier title History of UFO Crash/Retrievals", 1988, PEA RESEARCH.

Technology

• Paul R. Hill, Unconventional Flying Objects: a scientific analysis, 1995, Hampton Roads Publishing Co., ISBN 1-57174-027-9. Analysis of UFO technology by pioneering NACA/NASA aerospace engineer.
• James M. McCampbell, Ufology: A Major Breakthrough in the Scientific Understanding of Unidentified Flying Objects, 1973, 1976, Celestial Arts, ISBN 0-89087-144-2 full-text online. Another analysis by former NASA and nuclear engineer.
• James M. McCampbell, Physical effects of UFOs upon people, 1986, paper.
• Antonio F. Rullán, Odors from UFOs: Deducing Odorant Chemistry and Causation from Available Data, 2000, preliminary paper.
• Jack Sarfatti, "Super Cosmos", 2005 (Authorhouse)
• S. Krasnikov (2003). "The quantum inequalities do not forbid spacetime shortcuts". Physical Review D. 67: 104013. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.67.104013. See also the "eprint version". arXiv.
• L. H. Ford and T. A. Roman (1996). "Quantum field theory constrains traversable wormhole geometries". Physical Review D. 53: 5496. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.53.5496. See also the "eprint". arXiv.

External links

• Ministry of Defence Reports in the UK from 1997 - 2007
• Alien Conspiracy Alien Conspiracy

• UFOs at Curlie
• Real UFO Pictures From UFO research site.
• True UFO UFO News and Information
• Alien engineering- Documentary
• The Secret KGB-UFO Files- Documentary