149-465: A flying saucer , or flying disc , is a purported disc-shaped UFO . The term was coined in 1947 by the news media for the objects pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed flew alongside his airplane above Washington State . Newspapers reported Arnold's story with speed estimates implausible for airplanes of the period. The story spurred a wave of hundreds of sightings across the United States, including
298-498: A Pew research poll found that 51% in the United States thought that UFOs reported by people in the military were likely to be evidence of intelligent life from beyond the Earth. In August 2021, Gallup , with a question not specific to military reports, only found that 41% of adults believed some UFOs involve alien spacecraft from other planets. This Gallup poll showed 44% of men and 38% of women believed this. This average of 41% in 2021
447-499: A wave of sightings followed. The 1952 sightings spurred Leonard H. Stringfield to form an early UFO investigation group called the "Civilian Investigating Group for Aerial Phenomena" and to publish research on UFOs. Albert K. Bender started his own "International Flying Saucer Bureau" in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1952. Influenced by these works, James W. Moseley began to tour the country interviewing witnesses and distributing
596-492: A 1911–1912 serial. He painted 38 covers for Amazing Stories from April 1926 to June 1929 and seven for the Amazing Stories Annual and Quarterly ; with several dozen additional issues featuring his art on the back cover (May 1939 to July 1946), and several issues from April 1961 to September 1968 featuring new or reproduced art. After Gernsback lost control of Amazing Stories in 1929, Paul followed him to
745-517: A 1969 USAF document, known as the Bolender memo, along with later government documents, revealed that non-public U.S. government UFO investigations continued after 1970. The Bolender memo first stated that "reports of unidentified flying objects that could affect national security ... are not part of the Blue Book system," indicating that more serious UFO incidents already were handled outside
894-428: A 1996 poll by Newsweek , 20% of Americans believed that UFOs were more likely to be proof of alien life than to have a natural scientific explanation. In December 2017, a new round of media attention started when The New York Times broke the story of the secret Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program that was funded from 2007 to 2012 with $ 22 million spent on the program. Following this story, along with
1043-664: A Belgian immigrant, in 1913, and they had four children, Robert S. Paul (born 1915), Francis L. Paul (born 1919), Joan C. Paul (born 1921), and Patricia Ann Paul (born 1929). He studied art in Vienna, Paris, and New York City. He went to work for the Jersey Journal performing graphic design . Publisher Hugo Gernsback hired him in 1914 to illustrate The Electrical Experimenter , a science magazine. He died on June 29, 1963, at his home in Teaneck, New Jersey . Paul's work
1192-424: A June 26 radio interview, Arnold described them as "something like a pie plate that was cut in half with a sort of a convex triangle in the rear". Headline writers coined the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" (or "disc") for the story. Arnold later told CBS news that the early coverage "did not quote me properly [...] when I described how they flew, I said that they flew like they take a saucer and throw it across
1341-505: A UFO and reported recovered memories of their experience that became ever more elaborate as the years went by. In 1966, 5% of Americans reported to Gallup that "they had at some time seen something they thought was a 'flying saucer'", 96% said "they had heard or read about flying saucers", and 46% of these "thought they were 'something real' rather than just people's imagination". Responding to UFO enthusiasm, there have always been consistent yet less popular efforts made at debunking many of
1490-473: A daily occurrence with one particularly famous example being the Roswell incident in 1947 where remnants of a downed observation balloon were recovered by a farmer and confiscated by military personnel. UFO enthusiasts in the early 1950s started to organize local "saucer clubs" modeled after science fiction fan clubs of the 1930s and 1940s, with some growing to national and international prominence within
1639-562: A decade. In 1950, three influential books were published— Donald Keyhoe 's The Flying Saucers Are Real , Frank Scully 's Behind the Flying Saucers , and Gerald Heard 's The Riddle of the Flying Saucers . Each guilelessly proposed that the extraterrestrial UFO hypothesis was the correct explanation and that the visits were in response to detonations of atomic weapons . These books also introduced Americans to, as Eghanian puts it, "the crusading whistleblower dedicated to breaking
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#17327724077761788-411: A dome or knob-shaped protrusion on the top side. Size estimates ranged from 20 feet to thousands of feet in diameter. Menzel found saucers reported in nearly every color, often glowing or flashing. The sightings had little consistency in reported movement or sounds. Some witnesses reported silent objects; others reported a roar or thunderclap. Sightings were most often during the night. If the saucer's crew
1937-407: 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." The regulation went on to say that "it is permissible to inform news media representatives on UFOB's when the object is positively identified as a familiar object" but added: "For those objects which are not explainable, only
2086-500: A flying disc. Throughout 1947, the saucers became increasingly associated with the idea of extraterrestrial life. The stories spread to other countries, where they were influenced by local political and social concerns. In Europe, which was still recovering from the Second World War , saucers were often reported with rocket-like features. German newspapers reported flying saucers that exploded or had tails of fire. The names for
2235-489: A genre emerged that treated fantastical stories as either true or plausibly true. The debut issues of Mystic magazine asked readers, "When you read this story, you will tell yourself that it is fiction; the editors assure you that it is. But what if—it isn't?" The Fortec Conspiracy , a science fiction novel, both drew from and fed into the UFO rumors surrounding the Roswell incident debris. Aliens and flying discs were common in
2384-418: A hovering disc by tilting their own body. Video games have a long history of depicting flying saucers, typically as antagonists. In the arcades, the popular early shooting games Asteroids (1979) and Space Invaders (1978) featured flying saucers as "bonus" enemies that only emerged briefly. Super Mario Land , one of Nintendo 's launch titles for the original Game Boy , contained spaceships modeled on
2533-425: A living drawing spaceships; this is a slight exaggeration, as much of his income was also derived from technical drawing. He was also the cover artist of Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), the first ever Marvel Comic and became well known for his work. He was very innovative in the depiction of spaceships. Several of his illustrations were disc shaped and it has been speculated that he may have, accidentally, created
2682-671: A month of the first flying saucer reports, Crisman sent Palmer metal fragments and an account from his employee Harold Dahl about a malfunctioning flying saucer. Palmer recruited Kenneth Arnold to investigate Crisman and Dahl's Maury Island incident . The metal turned out to be slag from a local smelter, but the men in black that Crisman and Dahl claimed were following them would become a common element of later UFO accounts. Gray Barker popularized "men in black" who intimidate or silence UFO witnesses in his book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers . Palmer launched Fate (magazine) in 1948, claiming to offer "the truth about flying saucers". It
2831-573: A newsletter for the growing saucer subculture. Within a decade of the first saucer sightings, reports had spread to many countries where local groups and ufologists emerged. Antonio Ribera started Centro de Estudios Interplanetarios in Spain, and Edgar Jarrold founded the Australia Flying Saucer Bureau . In France, UFO groups overlapped with occult groups and the anti-nuclear movement . Reports have been more often made in
2980-507: A parallel social movement. Well-known Variety columnist Frank Scully published Behind the Flying Saucers in 1950. The book presents the Aztec, New Mexico crashed saucer hoax as the true account of an alien craft that "gently pancaked to earth like Sonja Henie imitating a dying swan" and was recovered by the United States government. It describes one of the hoaxers—who were convicted of fraud for selling nonfunctional dowsing equipment to
3129-427: 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
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#17327724077763278-625: A popular explanation in France. Flying saucers in popular media underwent a similar change in movement. Early films like The Flying Saucer (1950) and film serials like Bruce Gentry – Daredevil of the Skies (1949) show saucers streaking past at high speeds. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) mentions high speeds tracked by radar but also includes a slow landing scene. The 1960s television series The Invaders prominently features
3427-569: A professor of philosophy and religion at the University of North Carolina, says that what is seen on a screen, "if it conforms to certain criteria, is interpreted as real, even if it is not real and even if one knows it is not real" and that "screen images embed themselves in one's brain and memories" in ways that "can determine how one views one's past and even determine one's future behaviors". The most notable cases of UFO sightings in France include: UFOs have been subject to investigations over
3576-608: A prominent roadside flying saucer at its welcome center. UFO-shaped homes include the Futuro pods designed by Matti Suuronen , the former Sanzhi UFO houses from the Sanzhi District , New Taipei , Taiwan , and artist Harry Visser's iconic home in Roodepoort, Johannesburg. Flying saucers were a ubiquitous part of pop culture from 1947 into the mid 1970s. Flying disc motifs were used in toys and other novelties soon after
3725-467: A series of sensationalized Pentagon UFO videos leaked by members of the program who became convinced that UFOs were genuine mysteries worth investigating, there was an increase in mainstream attention to UFO stories. In July 2021, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb announced the creation of his Galileo Project which intended to use high-tech astronomical equipment to seek evidence of extraterrestrial artifacts in space and possibly within Earth's atmosphere. This
3874-556: A slow landing scene in every episode. Many later iconic flying saucer films, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Fire in the Sky (1993), depict hovering and slow movements. Since the late 1940s, flying discs have increasingly become associated with a cultural conception of aliens that reflects the social and political anxieties of the 20th century. Fictional flying saucers reflect concerns around atomic warfare ,
4023-732: A subgenre of documentary photography , showing often blurry or abstract discs framed by otherwise everyday settings. Notable examples include the McMinnville photographs , the Passaic UFO photographs , and the photographs of contactee George Adamski. Some of the alleged flying saucer photographs of the era were hoaxes , done with everyday objects like hubcaps . German rocket scientist Walther Johannes Riedel analyzed George Adamski's UFO photos and found them to be faked. The UFO's "landing struts" were General Electric light bulbs with logos printed on them. UFO researcher Joel Carpenter identified
4172-442: A threat to national security. Officials were concerned about the "risk of false alerts", of "falsely identifying the real as phantom", and of mass hysteria caused by sightings. In 1947, Brigadier General George F. Schulgen of Army Air Corps Intelligence, warned "the first reported sightings might have been by individuals of Communist sympathies with the view to causing hysteria and fear of a secret Russian weapon." In November 2011,
4321-476: A trail, occasional formation flying, and "evasive" behavior "when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar", suggesting a controlled craft. It was therefore recommended in late September 1947 that an official Air Force investigation be set up. It was also recommended that other government agencies should assist in the investigation. Project Sign's final report, published in early 1949, stated that while some UFOs appeared to represent actual aircraft, there
4470-541: A very good case for precognition; Paul has shown turbulent cloud formations, cyclonic patterns and enigmatic white structures like earth-sized amoebae which were not revealed until the Voyager missions over fifty years later. How did he know?" Paul's emphasis on concept, action and milieu over human figures was to continue to be a defining genre signal of SF art even when executed by successors with greater technical skill and more depth of artistic vision. The visual language of
4619-529: Is Halley's Comet : first recorded by Chinese astronomers in 240 BC and possibly as early as 467 BC as a strange and unknown "guest light" in the sky. As a bright comet that visits the inner solar system every 76 years, it was often identified as a unique isolated event in ancient historical documents whose authors were unaware that it was a repeating phenomenon. Such accounts in history often were treated as supernatural portents, angels , or other religious omens . While UFO enthusiasts have sometimes commented on
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4768-432: Is LESS to these stories than meets the eye". People have always observed the sky and have sometimes seen what, to some, appeared to be unusual sights including phenomena as varied as comets , bright meteors , one or more of the five planets that can be readily seen with the naked eye , planetary conjunctions , and atmospheric optical phenomena such as parhelia and lenticular clouds . One particularly famous example
4917-569: Is any perceived airborne, submerged or transmedium phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. Upon investigation, most UFOs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained. While unusual sightings have been reported in the sky throughout history, UFOs became culturally prominent after World War II , escalating during the Space Age . Studies and investigations into UFO reports conducted by governments (such as Project Blue Book in
5066-515: Is certainly familiar to historians of religion, a domain of human existence marked by deep divisions over interpretations of belief", and science too has found itself engaged increasing amounts of "boundary work" (which is "asserting and reasserting the borders between legitimate and illegitimate scientific research and ideas, between what may and what may not refer to itself as science") with regard to UFO questions. Eghigian points out our current "stark divide did not happen overnight, and its roots lie in
5215-458: Is characterized by dramatic compositions (often involving enormous machines, robots or spaceships), bright or even garish colors, and a limited ability to depict human faces, especially the female ones. His early architectural training is also evident in his work. Paul illustrated the cover of Gernsback's own novel, Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660 (The Stratford Company, 1925), originally
5364-463: Is often referred to as the "Jetsons look". Architect Frank Lloyd Wright , who collaborated on the design of the flying saucer in "The Day The Earth Stood Still", went on to use the flying saucer as an architectural motif. Wright's circular Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin , United States, is capped by a flattened dome over a hundred feet across. Spaceships are also one of
5513-642: Is probably that for August 1927 (see image), illustrating The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells , whose serial reprint began in that number. Paul created hundreds of interior illustrations from no later than 1920. From The Pen of Paul: The Fantastic Images of Frank R. Paul , edited and an introduction by Stephen Korshak with a preface by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, is a giant compendium and very first collection ever published showcasing many of Paul's full-color science-fiction artwork; Korshak Collection. In many ways, Frank R. Paul's achievements and influence on
5662-520: 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. It reported that "the phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious," and there were disc-shaped objects, metallic in appearance, as big as man-made aircraft. They were characterized by "extreme rates of climb [and] maneuverability", general lack of noise, absence of
5811-601: Is seen as a symbol of 1950s culture. The motif is common in Googie architecture and Atomic Age décor. Notable flying saucer structures include Seattle's Space Needle and Los Angeles International Airport's Theme Building . Googie architecture in California, like the Chemosphere home, influenced the futuristic structures in the 1960s cartoon The Jetsons . The cartoon popularized the style to such an extent, that it
5960-489: Is that the idea of space vehicles shaped like flying saucers was imprinted in the national psyche for many years prior to 1947, when the Roswell incident took place. It didn't take much stretching for the first observers of UFOs to assume that the unknown objects hovering in the sky had the same disk shape as the science fictional vehicles. The modern flying saucer concept, including the association with aliens, can be traced to
6109-424: Is that they cannot discard the possibility that some fraction of the very strange 22% of unexplained cases might be due to distant and advanced civilizations. Frank R. Paul Frank Rudolph Paul ( German: [paʊl] ; born Rudolph Franz Paul ; April 18, 1884 – June 29, 1963) was an American illustrator of pulp magazines in the science fiction field. A discovery of editor Hugo Gernsback , Paul
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6258-505: The Denison Daily News printed an article in which John Martin, a local farmer, reported an object resembling a balloon flying "at wonderful speed". The newspaper said it appeared to be about the size of a saucer from his perspective, one of the first uses of the word "saucer" in association with a UFO. During the 1940s, allied pilots reported encountering foo fighters they believed were advanced axis aircraft. Many aspects of
6407-582: The Wonder Stories magazines and associated quarterlies, which published 103 of his color covers from June 1929 to April 1936. Paul also painted covers for Planet Stories , Superworld Comics , Science Fiction magazine, and the first issue (October–November 1939) of Marvel Comics . The latter featured the debuts of Human Torch and Sub-Mariner , and good copies sell at auction for twenty to thirty thousand dollars. All told, his magazine covers exceed 220. His most famous Amazing Stories cover
6556-505: The tokusatsu tradition in mid-50s films like Fearful Attack of the Flying Saucers and Warning from Space . Indian cinema began to incorporate alien invaders in the 1960s, starting with the Tamil-language Kalai Arasi . An adaptation of Bankubabur Bandhu by Satyajit Ray was never completed but may have influenced other works of science fiction. In Spain, alien-themed television shows became popular in
6705-595: The AAAS , James E. McDonald said he believed science had failed to mount adequate studies of the problem and criticized the Condon Report and earlier studies by the USAF as scientifically deficient. He also questioned the basis for Condon's conclusions and argued that the reports of UFOs have been "laughed out of scientific court". J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer who worked as a USAF consultant from 1948, sharply criticized
6854-639: The Brazilian Air Force 's 1977 Operação Prato (Operation Saucer). France has had an ongoing investigation (GEPAN/SEPRA/ GEIPAN ) within its space agency Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) since 1977; the government of Uruguay has had a similar investigation since 1989. On October 31, 2008, the National Archives of Brazil began receiving from the Aeronautical Documentation and History Center part of
7003-547: The Cold War , loss of bodily integrity , xenophobia , government secrecy, and whether humanity is alone in the universe. No correlation has been found between the release of major UFO films and spikes in sightings. A disc, often domed or shining down a ray of light, has become visual shorthand for aliens. It has been used in modern times to signify pop culture aliens. The aerial disc motif has been misinterpreted in much older art, created when it had different connotations. In 2017,
7152-579: The Daleks in Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. or the Cybermen in " The Tenth Planet ". Aliens in the film Independence Day (1996) attacked humanity in giant city-sized saucer-shaped spaceships. As the flying saucer was surpassed by other designs and concepts, it fell out of favor with straight science-fiction moviemakers, but continued to be used ironically in comedy movies, especially in reference to
7301-867: The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), FBI , CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), as well as military intelligence agencies of the Army and U.S. Navy , in addition to the Air Force. Following the large U.S. surge in sightings in June and early July 1947, on July 9, 1947, United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) intelligence, in cooperation with the FBI, began a formal investigation into selected sightings with characteristics that could not be immediately rationalized, such as Kenneth Arnold's. The USAAF used "all of its top scientists" to determine whether "such
7450-788: The Falcon Lake incident in Manitoba and the Shag Harbour UFO incident in Nova Scotia. Early Canadian studies included Project Magnet (1950–1954) and Project Second Storey (1952–1954), supported by the Defence Research Board . U.S. investigations into UFOs include: In addition to these, thousands of documents released under FOIA also indicate that many U.S. intelligence agencies collected (and still collect) information on UFOs. These agencies include
7599-567: The Kenneth Arnold incident . "Unidentified flying object" (UFO) has been in-use since 1947. The acronym, "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt , for the USAF. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO". The term UFO became widespread during
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#17327724077767748-466: The Mantell UFO incident , a pilot died while pursuing an unknown round object that was later identified as a Skyhook balloon. Beginning in the mid 1950s, psychologists began to study why people believed in flying saucers if the evidence was so limited. French psychiatrist Georges Heuyer considered the movement to be a kind of global folie à deux , or shared delusion, used to navigate anxieties. In
7897-859: The Most SNP in Bratislava , and The Flying Saucer in Sharjah , United Arab Emirates . The Westall UFO was commemorated with the Grange Reserve UFO Park, featuring a UFO with red slides modeled after the reported sighting. Roswell, New Mexico , is a UFO tourist destination in the Southwestern United States. Many structures in the town, including the streetlights and the McDonald's, are designed around alien themes. Moonbeam, Ontario has an alien for its mascot and
8046-615: The Roswell incident and Flight 105 UFO sighting . The concept quickly spread to other countries. Early reports speculated about secret military technology, but flying saucers became synonymous with aliens by 1950. The term has gradually been supplanted by the more general military terms unidentified flying object (UFO) and unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). In science fiction , reported UFO sightings , UFO conspiracy theories , and broader popular culture, saucers are typically piloted by nonhuman beings. Descriptions in reported sightings vary considerably. Early reports emphasized speed but
8195-494: The White House released an official response to two petitions asking the U.S. government to acknowledge formally that aliens have visited this planet and to disclose any intentional withholding of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings. According to the response: The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of
8344-457: The "flying saucers" concept in the fantasy artwork of the 1930s pulp science fiction magazines, by artists like Frank R. Paul . One of the first depictions of a "flying saucer", by illustrator Frank R. Paul appeared on the cover of the November 1929 issue of Hugo Gernsback 's pulp science fiction magazine Science Wonder Stories . Science fiction illustrator Frank Wu wrote: The point
8493-443: The '80s and '90s "the floodgates opened, and with them a new generation of UFO advocates". Leaders among them were the artist Budd Hopkins , horror writer Whitley Strieber , historian David Jacobs , and Harvard psychiatrist John Mack . They all defended the "veracity of those claiming to have been kidnapped, examined, and experimented upon by beings from another world", writes Eghigian, as "new missionaries who simultaneously played
8642-614: The 1800s included details like metal hulls, propellers, searchlights, and large wings. The 1947 sightings—occurring months before Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier —emphasized the "incredible speed" of flying saucers. The majority of 1947 reports emphasized speed. This fell to 41 percent in 1971, and 22 percent in 1986. In the 1950s, hovering flying saucers were associated with contactees and hoaxes; by 1986 almost half of reported UFOs were claimed to hover slowly or motionlessly. The majority of flying saucer and broader UFO reports have been identified with known phenomena . Investigations by
8791-493: The 1947 Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting . On June 24, 1947, businessman and amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold landed at the Yakima, Washington airstrip. He told staff and friends that he'd seen nine unusual airborne objects. Arnold estimated their speed at 1,700 miles per hour, beyond the capabilities of known aircraft. Newspapers soon contacted Arnold for interviews. The East Oregonian reported his supposed aircraft as "saucer-like". In
8940-487: The 1950s science fiction comics that flourished after the Golden Age of Comic Books . The comic book anthology UFO Flying Saucers , launched in the 1960s, published illustrations of supposedly real sightings. The opening to its first issue declared, "Our scientists have seen them! Our airmen have fought them!" Advertisements in the 1950s and 1960s referenced flying saucers as purported alien spacecraft and reflected
9089-409: The 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. Unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAP) first appeared in the late 1960s. UAP has seen increasing usage in the 21st century due to negative cultural associations with "UFO". UAP is sometimes expanded as "unidentified anomalous phenomenon". While technically a UFO refers to any unidentified flying object, in modern popular culture
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#17327724077769238-400: The 1950s, musicians like Billy Lee Riley , Jesse Lee Turner , and Betty Johnson released novelty songs about flying discs and alien invaders. Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman released the first break-in record , " The Flying Saucer ", which took the form of a mock news broadcast covering an alien invasion. Disneyland introduced Flying Saucers , an attraction where guests could pilot
9387-545: The 1960s, they waned in popularity. Discs ceased to be viewed as the standard shape for alien spacecraft but are still often depicted, sometimes for their retro value to evoke the early Cold War era. Reports of fantastical aircraft predate the first flying saucers. In antiquity, mysterious lights in the sky were interpreted as spiritual phenomena. In the 1800s, many newspapers reported massive airships with glowing lights and humming engines. These are often seen as precursors to "flying saucer" and "UFO" sightings. On January 25, 1878,
9536-636: The 1960s. Flying saucers quickly spread to other genres. In Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 's big-budget Forbidden Planet , a futuristic 1956 adaptation of William Shakespeare's play The Tempest , humans travel through space in the United Planets Cruiser C-57D , a ship resembling a 1950s flying saucer. The Twilight Zone episodes "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", "Third from the Sun", " Death Ship ", " To Serve Man ", " The Invaders " and " On Thursday We Leave for Home " all make use of
9685-488: The 1970s, French UFO researcher Michel Monnerie examined reports that were later identified and reports that remained unidentified. Monnerie found no difference in the frequency of paranormal phenomena reported alongside the sightings identified later as mundane known objects. This led him to develop the thesis that the saucer-specific experiences were a "psychosocial" process of myth-making triggered by but not caused by aerial phenomena. This Psychosocial UFO hypothesis became
9834-559: The 1980s and 1990s, UFO stories featured in such pulp "true crime" serials as Unsolved Mysteries while the 33 Volume Time-Life series Mysteries of the Unknown which featured UFO stories sold some 700,000 copies. Kloor writes that by the late 1990s, "other big UFO subthemes had been prominently introduced into pop culture, such as the abduction phenomenon and government conspiracy narrative , via best-selling books and, of course, The X-Files ". Eghigian notes that, by this point,
9983-510: The Air Force issued a statement to the effect that the book was outdated and cadets instead were being informed of the Condon Report 's negative conclusion. Controversy surrounded the report, both before and after its release. It has been observed that the report was "harshly criticized by numerous scientists, particularly at the powerful AIAA ... [which] recommended moderate, but continuous scientific work on UFOs." In an address to
10132-589: The Arnold incident, reported that over 25% of the U.S. public "believed unidentified flying objects could be from outer space". The cultural phenomenon showed up within some intellectual works such as the 1959 publication of Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky by Carl Jung , a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Starting in 1947, the U.S. Air Force began to record and investigated UFO reports with Project Sign looking into "more than 250 cases" from 1947 to 1949. It
10281-503: The British government in th 1950s found the vast majority of reports to be misidentifications or hoaxes. Some causes of saucer sightings include Venus, ice crystals, balloons, and airborne trash. The US Government and General Mills launched thousands of top-secret Skyhook spy balloon during the 1950s. These massive balloons floated at high altitudes, making it difficult to judge their speed, and were widely reported as flying saucers. During
10430-536: The CIA Director (DCI) in December read that "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 high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such a nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or any known types of aerial vehicles." The matter
10579-942: The Chilean Committee for the Study of Unidentified Space Phenomena, supported even by the Chilean Scientific Society. Currently, the organization changed its denomination to SEFAA and its a department of the DGAC (Chile) which in turn depends on the Chilean Air Force . 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 considers "unsolved"
10728-501: The Cold War. The 1949 film serial Bruce Gentry – Daredevil of the Skies featured a man-made flying saucer, and the 1950 film The Flying Saucer focused on Cold War espionage. The first novel to explicitly use the term "flying saucer" was Bernard Newman 's The Flying Saucer , released in 1950. The novel's craft was a hoaxed alien ship intended to end military tension by giving humanity a common enemy. Two early 1950s films, The Day
10877-530: The Condon Committee Report and later wrote two nontechnical books that set forth the case for continuing to investigate UFO reports. Ruppelt recounted his experiences with Project Blue Book, a USAF investigation that preceded Condon's. According to a 1979 New York Times report, "records from the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and other Federal agencies" ("about 900 documents—nearly 900 pages of memos, reports and correspondence") obtained in 1978 through
11026-468: The Earth Stood Still and The Thing from Another World , were financial successes that established the market for an "alien visitor" subgenre of science fiction that merged flying saucers into existing space opera tropes. Slowly hovering discs, like the one from the landing scene in The Day the Earth Stood Still , appeared throughout science fiction including It Came from Outer Space (1953), Earth vs.
11175-539: The Flying Saucers (1956), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), and the television series The Invaders . While contactees described aliens as benevolent messengers, Hollywood films often depicted them as monstrous antagonists. Other localities adapted the largely American phenomenon at different times, adding elements of the local culture. Early British films were low-budget productions like Devil Girl from Mars (1954) and Stranger from Venus (1954). Japanese filmmakers incorporated flying discs and alien invaders into
11324-556: The Freedom of Information Act request, indicate that "despite official pronouncements for decades that U.F.O.'s were nothing more than misidentified aerial objects and as such were no cause for alarm ... the phenomenon has aroused much serious behind‐the‐scenes concern" in the US government. In particular, officials were concerned over the "approximately 10%" of UFO sightings which remained unexplained, and whether they might be Soviet aircraft and
11473-504: The Harvard Medical School initiated a review of his position which allowed him to retain tenure. However, after this review, as the review board chairman Arnold Relman later put it, Mack was "not taken seriously by his colleagues anymore". Claims of alien abduction have continued, but no other clinicians would continue to speak of them as real in any sense. Nonetheless, these ideas persisted in popular opinion. According to
11622-417: The U.S. His cover for the November 1929 Science Wonder Stories was an early, if not the earliest, depiction of a flying saucer . This painting appeared almost two decades before the sightings of mysterious flying objects by Kenneth Arnold . So large was his stature that he was the only guest of honor at the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939. He has been described as the first person to make
11771-411: The UFO problem had become "far more interesting to ponder than to actually solve." Interest was particularly fevered in the 1990s with the publicity surrounding the television broadcast of an Alien autopsy video marketed as "real footage" but later admitted to be a staged "re-enactment". Eghigian writes that "there had always been outlier abduction reports dating back to the '50s and '60s" but that in
11920-480: The US in over 50 years. Another Congressional hearing took place on July 26, 2023, featuring the whistleblower claims of former U.S. Air Force (USAF) officer and intelligence official David Grusch. A Harris Poll in 2009 found that 32% of Americans "believe in UFOs". A National Geographic study in June 2012 found that 36% of Americans believe UFOs exist and that 10% thought that they had spotted one. In June 2021
12069-602: The United States and Project Condign in the United Kingdom ), as well as by organisations and individuals have occurred over the years without confirmation of the fantastical claims of small but vocal groups of ufologists who favour unconventional or pseudoscientific hypotheses, often claiming that UFOs are evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence , technologically advanced cryptids , demons , interdimensional contact or future time travelers . After decades of promotion of such ideas by believers and in popular media,
12218-550: The best known government studies are the ghost rockets investigation by the Swedish military (1946–1947), Project Blue Book, previously Project Sign and Project Grudge , conducted by the USAF from 1947 until 1969, the secret U.S. Army/Air Force Project Twinkle investigation into green fireballs (1948–1951), the secret USAF Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 by the Battelle Memorial Institute , and
12367-531: The body of Adamski's "flying saucer" as the lampshade from a 1930s pressure lantern. Flying saucers are now considered retro and emblematic of the 1950s and of B movies in particular. The term "flying saucer" was gradually supplanted by "UFO" and later "UAP". Discs ceased to be the standard shape in UFO reports, and a broader variety of objects were reported. Recent reports more often describe spherical and triangular UFOs . Flying saucer sightings differ in their descriptions of appearance, movement, and purpose of
12516-465: The century. By most accounts, the popular UFO craze in the US began with a media frenzy surrounding the reports on June 24, 1947, of a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold who described seeing "a group of bat-like aircraft flying in formation at high speeds" near Mount Rainier that he said were "moving like a saucer would if skipped across water" which led to headlines about "flying saucers" and "flying discs". Only weeks after Arnold's story
12665-444: The claims, and at times the media was enlisted including a 1966 TV special, "UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?", in which Walter Cronkite "patiently" explained to viewers that UFOs were fantasy. Cronkite enlisted Carl Sagan and J. Allen Hynek , who told Cronkite, "To this time, there is no valid scientific proof that we have been visited by spaceships". Such attempts to disenchant the zeitgeist were not very successful at tamping down
12814-513: The countries where UFO groups are in operation, such as the United States, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. By the end of the decade, The Case for the UFO author Morris K. Jessup reflected on his field, "This embryonic science is as full of cults, feuds, and dogmas as a dog is of fleas. There are probably more opinions about the nature and purpose of UFO's as there are Ufologers." UFO photography emerged as
12963-804: The descriptions shifted over the decades to the objects mostly hovering. They are generally said to be round, sometimes with a protrusion on top, but details of the shape vary between reports. Flying saucers have been described as silent or deafening, with lights of every color, flying alone or in formation, and twenty to thousands of feet in diameter. Sightings are most frequent at night. The majority of reported saucers have been identified with known phenomena including astronomical objects like Venus , airborne objects like balloons, and optical phenomena like sun dogs . 1950s pop culture embraced flying saucers. These discs appeared in film, television, literature, music, and other minor aspects like toys and advertising. The shape became visual shorthand for alien invaders. During
13112-501: The direct instruction of an extraterrestrial. Some existing religions began to incorporate flying saucers. The Nation of Islam taught that the end of the world would be brought about by the "Mother Wheel" or "Mother Plane", a flying saucer half a mile wide. During the same time that Margaret Murray 's "Old Religion" or witch-cult hypothesis was being discredited in academic circles, its core idea—a lost civilization remembered in myth—was being embraced in pulp fiction, occult groups, and
13261-519: The discs were largely derived from the English "flying saucer" including the French soucoupe volante , Spanish platillo volante , Portuguese disco voador , Swedish flygande tefat , German fliegende Untertasse , and Italian disco volante . Flying saucer reporting declined by the end of summer. Newspapers had reported hoaxes by those looking to profit from the saucers and the Roswell incident , which
13410-721: The distances involved." On June 25, 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on UAPs. The report found that the UAPTF was unable to identify 143 objects spotted between 2004 and 2021. The report said that 18 of these featured unusual movement patterns or flight characteristics, adding that more analysis was needed to determine if those sightings represented "breakthrough" technology. The report said that "some of these steps are resource-intensive and would require additional investment." The report did not link
13559-399: The diversity of attitudes towards their plausibility. The major attitudes towards UFOs invoked in print advertisements were the potential for advanced technology, awe towards their potential pilots, and skepticism about hoaxes. Much of the former pulp reader base shifted their attention to the growing medium of television during the 1950s. Many early portrayals of flying saucers linked them to
13708-597: The documentation of the Brazilian Air Force regarding the investigation of the appearance of UFOs in Brazil . Currently, this collection gathers cases between 1952 and 2016. In 1968, the SEFAA (previously CEFAA) began receiving case reports of the general public, civil aviators and the Chilean Air Force regarding the sightings or the appearance of UFOs in Chile , the initial work was an initiative of Sergio Bravo Flores who led
13857-465: The earliest reports. The frisbee was introduced in 1948 and initially branded the "flying saucer". Flying saucer candy was introduced in the 1950s when a Belgian producer of communion wafers had a dip in sales. Along with other vintage candies, they have since seen renewed interest from customers as "retro". In the 1950s and early 1960s, Japan was a major manufacturer of tin toys often with space themes like robots, rockets, and flying discs. Throughout
14006-473: The existential terror of nuclear war to foreign enslavement to loss of bodily control". American entertainment has explored both "hostile aliens" as well as the "benevolent, world-expanding encounters" seen in films such as Steven Spielberg 's Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial . In her research on the relationship of media to UFO beliefs, Diana Walsh Pasulka ,
14155-506: The fact that ATIC [Air Technical Intelligence Center] will analyze the data is worthy of release, due to many unknowns involved." A public research effort conducted by the Condon Committee for the USAF and published as the Condon Report arrived at a negative conclusion in 1968. Blue Book closed down in 1970, using the Condon Committee's negative conclusion as a rationale, thus ending official Air Force UFO investigations. However,
14304-542: The field through the ages cannot be overestimated. His work appeared on the cover of the first issue (April 1926) of Amazing Stories magazine, the first magazine dedicated to science fiction. He would paint all the covers for over three years. These visions of robots, spaceships, and aliens were presented to an America wherein most people did not even have a telephone. Indeed, they were the first science fiction images seen by Ray Bradbury , Arthur C. Clarke , Forrest J Ackerman and others who would go on to great prominence in
14453-433: The field. Arthur C. Clarke wrote that the first science fiction magazine he encountered was the November 1928 edition of Amazing Stories , with a cover by Paul. He cites this as a crucial early incident that shifted his interest to science fiction. Clarke also comments on Paul's accurate depiction of Jupiter on that 1928 cover: "But the giant planet is painted with such stunning accuracy that one could use this cover to make
14602-548: The first in a series of UFO investigations by the US Government . In the following years, other national governments would follow suit. Canada began Project Magnet and the United Kingdom launched the Flying Saucer Working Party in 1950, which attributed saucer reports to meteorological phenomena, astronomical phenomena, misidentification, optical illusions, misconceptions, or hoaxes. By 1950,
14751-472: The flying saucer emoji was added to Unicode . There were several precursors to the modern flying saucers in science fiction literature, like The Shaver Mystery . Richard Sharpe Shaver's stories about a secret technologically advanced civilization of "detrimental robots" inside the earth were published as a true account of his life. Backlash from the science fiction community carried over to UFO literature. Saucers did appear in conventional science fiction, but
14900-613: The growing UFO movement. Several authors speculated that ancient astronauts piloting UFOs were the cause of myths and religions. Schoolteacher Robert Dione wrote God Drives a Flying Saucer to reframe biblical miracles and the Miracle of the Sun as the work of humanoid aliens piloting flying saucers. Later, Erich von Däniken released Chariots of the Gods? , a work of pseudoscience that attributed ancient artifacts and monuments to its purported ancient astronauts. Ufology developed as
15049-467: The human race...no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye.... The response further noted that efforts, like SETI and NASA's Kepler space telescope and Mars Science Laboratory , continue looking for signs of life . The response noted "odds are pretty high" that there may be life on other planets but "the odds of us making contact with any of them—especially any intelligent ones —are extremely small, given
15198-437: The hypothesis that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft and responded to the "onslaught of credulous coverage" in books, films and entertainment by teaching his students to apply critical thinking to such claims, advising them that "being a good scientist is not unlike being a good detective". According to Fraknoi, UFO reports "might at first seem mysterious", but "the more you investigate, the more likely you are to find that there
15347-562: The iconic saucer from Forbidden Planet . The C-57D was followed by other disc-shaped spaceships in broader science fiction, like the Jupiter 2 from the television series Lost in Space (1965-1968). Saucers appeared in the television series Babylon 5 (1994-1998) as starships used by a race called the Vree . Doctor Who has featured different designs of flying saucers, like those used by
15496-468: The kind of evidence required to solidly support such claims has not been forthcoming. Scientists and skeptic organizations such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry have provided prosaic explanations for UFOs, namely that they are caused by natural phenomena, human technology, delusions, and hoaxes. Beliefs surrounding UFOs have inspired parts of new religions even as social scientists have identified
15645-505: The last fifty years, the mutual antagonism between paranormal believers and skeptics has largely framed discussion about unidentified flying objects" and that "it often gets personal" with those taking seriously the prospect that UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin dismissing those who consider UFOs to be worth studying as "narrow-minded, biased, obstinate, and cruel" while the skeptics brushed off "devotees" as "naïve, ignorant, gullible, and downright dangerous". Such "mudslinging over convictions
15794-504: The longest ongoing government-sponsored investigation. About 22% of the 6,000 cases studied remain unexplained. The official opinion of GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN has been neutral, stating on their FAQ page that their mission is fact-finding for the scientific community, not rendering an opinion. They add they can neither prove nor disprove the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), but their Steering Committee's clear position
15943-454: The low-budget B movies , which often featured saucer-shaped alien craft. The 1964 Italian comedy Il disco volante centered around a flying saucer. The image is often invoked retrofuturistically to produce a nostalgic feel in period works, especially in comic science fiction. For example, Mars Attacks! (1996) draws on the flying saucer as part of the larger satire of 1950s B movie tropes. The sleek, silver flying saucer in particular
16092-551: The majority of SF art centers, even today, are more sophisticated versions of Paul's central tropes. The Frank R Paul Award , named in his honor, was awarded by the Nashville Science Fiction Association from 1976 to 1996 to such distinguished artists as Frank Kelly Freas , Alex Schomburg and Victoria Poyser . Frank R. Paul can be credited with the first color painting of a space station (August 1929, Science Wonder Stories ) published in
16241-537: The mania. Keith Kloor notes that the "allure of flying saucers" remained popular with the public into the 1970s, spurring production of such sci-fi films, as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien , which "continued to stoke public fascination". Meanwhile, Leonard Nimoy narrated a popular occult and mystery TV series In Search of... while daytime talk shows of Mike Douglas , Merv Griffin , and Phil Donahue featured interviews with alien abductees and people who credulously reported stories about UFOs . In
16390-691: The material and the mental dimensions [of UFOs] are incredibly important to get a sense of the full picture". As Adrian Horton writes "from The X-Files to Men in Black , Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Star Wars to Marvel , Hollywood has for decades provided an engrossing feedback loop for interest in the extraterrestrial: a reflection of our fears and capaciousness, whose ubiquitous popularity has in turn fueled more interest in UFOs as perennially compelling entertainment tropes not to be taken seriously". Horton observes that these "alien movies have generally reflected shifting cultural anxieties, from
16539-612: The narrative similarities between certain religious symbols in medieval paintings and UFO reports, the canonical and symbolic character of such images is documented by art historians placing more conventional religious interpretations on such images. Some examples of pre-contemporary reports about unusual aerial phenomena include: In the Pacific and European theatres during World War II , round, glowing fireballs known as " foo fighters " were reported by Allied and Axis pilots. Some explanations for these sightings included St. Elmo's fire ,
16688-518: The new moniker "unexplained aerial phenomenon" (UAP) to avoid associations with past sensationalism . On 17 May 2022, members of the United States House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation held congressional hearings with top military officials to discuss military reports of UAPs. It was the first public congressional hearing into UFO sightings in
16837-431: The oil industry based on the claim that it was derived from alien technology—as a doctor with "more degrees than a thermometer". Donald Keyhoe took a more serious "nuts and bolts" approach to the idea of the government covering up alien life in his 1950 book The Flying Saucers Are Real . When the popular and respected Life magazine ran " Have We Visitors From Space? " in 1952, taking seriously ideas of alien visitors,
16986-557: The ongoing interest and storytelling surrounding UFOs as a modern example of folklore and mythology understandable with psychosocial explanations . The U.S. government currently has two entities dedicated to UFO data collection and analysis: NASA's UAP independent study team and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office . During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often called " flying saucers " or "flying discs" based on reporting of
17135-522: The phenomenon include the MUFON , a grassroots organization whose investigator's handbooks go into great detail on the documentation of alleged UFO sightings. Air Force Regulation 200-2 , issued in 1953 and 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
17284-616: The photographs of George Adamski and set among various monuments falsely attributed to ancient astronauts , like the Egyptian pyramids and the monolithic Moai of Easter Island. The XCOM series tasks players with countering an invasion of aliens landing on Earth in flying discs. Saucers have appeared as a craft that players can control in Fortnite , Destroy All Humans , and Spore . UFO An unidentified flying object ( UFO ), or unidentified anomalous phenomenon ( UAP ),
17433-489: The planet Venus , hallucinations from oxygen deprivation , and German secret weapons (specifically rockets ). In 1946, more than 2,000 reports were collected, primarily by the Swedish military, of unidentified aerial objects over the Scandinavian nations, along with isolated reports from France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece. The objects were referred to as "Russian hail" (and later as " ghost rockets ") because it
17582-479: The postwar decades, in a series of events that—with their news coverage, grainy images, celebrity crusaders, exasperated skeptics, unsatisfying military statements, and accusations of a government cover-up—foreshadow our present moment". UFOs have been taken up by religious studies scholars in various scholarly books. Jeffrey Kripal, chair of the Department of Religion at Rice University , has said that "both
17731-491: 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." In the late 1960s, a chapter on UFOs in the Space Sciences course at the U.S. Air Force Academy gave serious consideration to possible extraterrestrial origins. When word of the curriculum became public, in 1970,
17880-415: The role of investigator, therapist, and advocate to their vulnerable charges". Eghigian says that Mack "signaled both the culmination and end of the headiest days of alien abduction". When Mack began working with and publishing accounts of abductees—or "experiencers", as he called them—in the early 1990s, he brought a sense of legitimacy to "the study of extraterrestrial captivity". By the late 1990s, however,
18029-406: The saucer. In a 1963 overview of flying saucers, astronomer Donald Howard Menzel found some broad traits across sightings, but noted that "no two reports describe exactly the same kind of UFO." Menzel found saucers were usually reported as round, but included objects shaped like dining saucers, teardrops, cigars, kidney beans, the planet Saturn , and yarn spindles . Saucers often were reported with
18178-545: The saucers and brought back messages for humanity. New religions and institutions arose around the contactees. Van Tassel's Aetherius Society built the Integratron , a domed structure near Landers, California , intended to facilitate further contact with aliens, physical rejuvenation, and time travel . According to George King , he founded the Ashtar Command —a new religious movement influenced by theosophy —at
18327-459: The sightings to extraterrestrial life. The Uruguayan Air Force has conducted UFO investigations since 1989 and reportedly analyzed 2,100 cases of which they regard approximately 2% as lacking explanation. In March 2007, the French space agency CNES published an archive of UFO sightings and other phenomena online. French studies include GEPAN/SEPRA/ GEIPAN within CNES (French space agency),
18476-562: The silence over the alien origins of unidentified flying objects". Media accounts and speculation ran rampant in the U.S., especially in connection to the 1952 UFO scare in Washington, D.C. so that, by 1953, the intelligence officials ( Robertson Panel ) worried that "genuine incursions" by enemy aircraft "over U.S. territory could be lost in a maelstrom of kooky hallucination" of UFO reports. A Trendex survey in August 1957, ten years after
18625-408: The stories were presented as a true account of Shaver's life. Until the magazine ceased printing Shaver's stories, Amazing Stories' s letter column was regularly full of readers sharing their own purportedly true sightings of the robots. Before the term "flying saucer" was coined, fantasy artwork in pulp magazines depicted flying discs. Commentators like Milton Rothman have noted the appearance of
18774-402: The study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge" and that further time investigating UFO reports "cannot be justified". From the 1960s to 1990s, UFOs were part of American popular culture's obsession with the supernatural and paranormal . In 1961, the first alien abduction account was sensationalized when Barney and Betty Hill underwent hypnosis after seeing
18923-593: The subjects of novelty architecture . Novelty architecture, also known as mimetic architecture, is the practice of creating structures shaped like other existing objects. The Communist-era Kielce Bus Station in Kielce, Poland, was designed by architect Edward Modrzejewski to resemble a UFO. Other modernist and brutalist UFO structures include the Ukrainian Institute of Scientific, Technical and Economic Information, Bulgaria's concrete Buzludzha monument ,
19072-962: The term UFO has generally become synonymous with alien spacecraft . The term "extra-terrestrial vehicle" (ETV) is sometimes used to separate this explanation of UFOs from totally earthbound explanations. Studies show that after careful investigation, the majority of UFOs can be identified as ordinary objects or phenomena. The 1952–1955 study for the USAF used the following categories: "Balloon; Astronomical; Aircraft; Light phenomenon; Birds, Clouds, dust, etc.; Insufficient information; Psychological manifestations; Unknown; and Other". The most commonly found identified sources of UFO reports are: An individual 1979 study by CUFOS researcher Allan Hendry found, as did other investigations, that fewer than one percent of cases he investigated were hoaxes and most sightings were actually honest misidentifications of prosaic phenomena. Hendry attributed most of these to inexperience or misperception. Astronomer Andrew Fraknoi rejected
19221-629: The term flying saucer was widely associated with extraterrestrial life. In a 1950 interview on flying saucers, Kenneth Arnold said, "if it's not made by our science or our Army Air Forces, I am inclined to believe it's of an extra-terrestrial origin". This extraterrestrial hypothesis was accompanied by a range of other unusual theories. Meade Layne speculated that they came from an alternate dimension. Under editor Ray Palmer, Amazing Stories had run Richard Sharpe Shaver 's purportedly true stories. Fred Crisman had written to Palmer about fighting Shaver's purported evil beings in an underground cavern. Within
19370-580: The typical flying saucer first appeared in science fiction. French sociologist Bertrand Méheust noted, for example, Jean de La Hire 's 1908 novel La Roue fulgurante [ fr ] ( The Lightning Wheel ). In the novel, a flying disc-shaped machine abducts the protagonists via a beam of light. Science fiction magazine Amazing Stories began publishing "The Shaver Mystery" in 1945. Written by Richard Sharpe Shaver and edited by Raymond A. Palmer , they were science fiction tales about technologically-advanced "detrimental robots" that abducted humans, but
19519-402: The water. Most of the newspapers misunderstood and misquoted that, too. They said that I said that they were saucer-like; I said that they flew in a saucer-like fashion." The circular shape of typical flying saucers may be due to reporters mistaking Arnold's "saucer-like" description of motion. Arnold's story incited a wave of hundreds of flying saucer reports . The next widely publicized report
19668-554: The years that varied widely in scope and scientific rigor. Governments or independent academics in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Peru, France, Belgium, Sweden, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Spain, and the Soviet Union are known to have investigated UFO reports at various times. No official government investigation has ever publicly concluded that UFOs are indisputably real, physical objects, extraterrestrial in origin, or of concern to national defense. Among
19817-615: Was called off after the Robertson Panel's negative conclusions in January 1953. Project Sign was dismantled and became Project Grudge at the end of 1948. Angered by the low quality of investigations by Grudge, the Air Force Director of Intelligence reorganized it as Project Blue Book in late 1951, placing Ruppelt in charge. J. Allen Hynek , a trained astronomer who served as a scientific advisor for Project Blue Book,
19966-514: Was considered so urgent that OS/I drafted a memorandum from the DCI to the NSC proposing that the NSC establish an investigation of UFOs as a priority project throughout the intelligence and the defense research and development community. It also urged the DCI to establish an external research project of top-level scientists, now known as the Robertson Panel to analyze the problem of UFOs. The OS/I investigation
20115-415: Was described by the witness, they were usually extraterrestrial . Flying saucers have been consistently described and depicted as ahead of contemporary technology. When comparing the 1947 saucer reports to the mystery airships of the 1800s, sociologist Robert Bartholomew found that the claimed observations "reflected popular social and cultural expectations of each period". The mystery airship sightings of
20264-415: Was divided on the potential origin of the saucers. Newspapers initially reported that Arnold suspected them to be experimental Soviet aircraft. A Gallup Poll found that 90% of Americans were aware of the saucer stories, 16 percent believed they were secret military weapons, and less than one percent believed they were alien craft. One report from Seattle, Washington, described a hammer and sickle painted onto
20413-432: Was followed closely by the publication of Loeb's book Extraterrestrial , in which he argued that the first interstellar comet ever observed, 'Oumuamua , might be an artificial light sail made by an alien civilization. Two government sponsored programs, NASA's UAP independent study team and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office were charged in part by Congressional fiat to investigate UFO claims more fully, adopting
20562-471: Was influential in defining the look of both cover art and interior illustrations in the nascent science fiction pulps of the 1920s. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in 2009. Paul was born on April 18, 1884, in Radkersburg , Austria-Hungary. His father was from Hungary and his mother from Czechoslovakia . He emigrated to the United States in 1906. He married Rudolpha Costa Rigelsen,
20711-418: Was initially skeptical of UFO reports, but eventually came to the conclusion that many of them could not be satisfactorily explained and was highly critical of what he described as "the cavalier disregard by Project Blue Book of the principles of scientific investigation". Leaving government work, he founded the privately funded CUFOS , to whose work he devoted the rest of his life. Other private groups studying
20860-477: Was not enough data to determine their origin. The Air Force's Project Sign was created at the end of 1947, and was one of the earliest government studies to come to a secret extraterrestrial conclusion. In August 1948, Sign investigators wrote a top-secret intelligence estimate to that effect, but the Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg ordered it destroyed. The existence of this suppressed report
21009-467: Was not universal in the CIA, however, as fellow NICAP official Donald E. Keyhoe wrote that Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter , the first director of the CIA, "wanted public disclosure of UFO evidence". Official U.S. Air Force interest in UFO reports went on hiatus in 1969 after a study by the University of Colorado led by Edward U. Condon and known as the Condon Report concluded "that nothing has come from
21158-534: Was quickly retracted as balloon debris. In the July 7 1947 Twin Falls saucer hoax , a widely reported crashed disc from Twin Falls, Idaho, was found to have been created by four teenagers using parts from a jukebox . The Air Force's Air Materiel Command collected over a hundred reports at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base , Ohio . Air Force General Nathan Twining established Project SAUCER, later renamed Project Sign ,
21307-407: Was replaced by Project Grudge up through 1951. In the third U.S. Air Force program, from March 1952 to its termination in December 1969, "the U.S. Air Force cataloged 12,618 sightings of UFOs as part of what is now known as Project Blue Book ". In the late 1950s, public pressure mounted for a full declassification of all UFO records, but the CIA played a role in refusing to allow this. This sense
21456-515: Was reported in 1947, Gallup published a poll asking people in the United States what the "flying saucers" might be. Already, 90% had heard of the new term. However, as reported by historian Greg Eghanian, "a majority either had no idea what they could be or thought that witnesses were mistaken" while "visitors from space were not initially among the options that anyone had in mind, and Gallup didn't even mention if anyone surveyed brought up aliens. Within weeks, reports of flying saucer sightings became
21605-572: Was revealed by several insiders who had read it, such as astronomer and USAF consultant J. Allen Hynek and Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, the first head of the USAF's Project Blue Book. Another highly classified U.S. study was conducted by the CIA's Office of Scientific Investigation (OS/I) in the latter half of 1952 in response to orders from the National Security Council (NSC). This study concluded UFOs were real physical objects of potential threat to national security. One OS/I memo to
21754-488: Was the sighting by a United Airlines crew on July 4 of nine more disc-like objects pacing their plane over Idaho . On July 8, the Army Air Force base at Roswell, New Mexico issued a press release saying that they had recovered a "flying disc" from a nearby ranch, the so-called Roswell UFO incident , which was front-page news until the military issued a retraction saying that it was a weather balloon. The public
21903-581: Was the first in a wave of non-fiction paranormal magazines that would thrive in the 1950s. A flying saucer movement developed during the 1950s. It was influenced by scientific research, occult practices, pop culture, existing religions, and earlier myths. In reports and in popular media like the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still , saucers and their pilots were characterized as messengers. The first wave of so-called contactees, George Hunt Williamson , George Van Tassel , Truman Bethurum , George Adamski , and Orfeo Angelucci claimed to have ridden aboard
22052-427: Was thought the mysterious objects were possibly Russian tests of captured German V1 or V2 rockets , but most were identified as natural phenomena as meteors. Many scholars, especially those arguing for the psychosocial UFO hypothesis , have noted that UFO characteristics reported after the first widely publicized modern sighting by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 resembled a host of science fiction tropes from earlier in
22201-433: Was up from 33% in a 2019 Gallup poll with the same question. Gallup further found that college graduates went in 2019 from being the least likely educational group to believe this to being on par in 2021 with adults who have no college education. An October 2022 poll by YouGov only found that 34% of Americans believe that UFOs are likely to involve alien life forms. Historian Greg Eghigian wrote in August 2021 that "over
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