Misplaced Pages

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94-575: Kenneth Albert Arnold (March 29, 1915 – January 16, 1984) was an American aviator, businessman, and politician. Arnold is known best for reporting what is generally considered the first widely publicized modern sighting of an unidentified flying object (UFO) in the United States, after claiming to have seen nine silver-colored discs flying in unison near Mount Rainier , Washington on June 24, 1947. After his alleged sighting, Arnold began investigating reports of UFOs, writing and speaking about

188-498: 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

282-517: 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

376-631: A 1977 convention curated by the magazine Fate to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the beginning of the modern UFO age. In 1984, Kenneth Arnold, aged 68, died from colon cancer at Overlake Hospital in Bellevue, Washington . Unidentified flying object An unidentified flying object ( UFO ), or unidentified anomalous phenomenon ( UAP ), 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

470-428: 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

564-505: 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

658-514: A chain reaction of mass hypnotism and fraud that has taken on the guise of a prolonged 'Martian Invasion' broadcast by that bizarre hambone Orson Welles". In 1952, Arnold and Palmer authored The Coming of the Saucers . Reportedly, Arnold came to believe he had experienced seven additional sightings, one of which involved a transparent saucer he likened to a jellyfish. By 1955, he began to promote space animal hypothesis when he suggested that

752-473: 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

846-562: 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

940-407: 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

1034-479: A minimum of 1,200 miles an hour (1,932 km/h). This was the first post- World War II sighting in the United States that garnered nationwide news coverage and is credited with being the first of the modern era of UFO sightings , including numerous reported sightings during the next two to three weeks. Arnold's description of the objects also resulted in the press soon inventing the terms flying saucer and flying disc as popular descriptive terms for UFOs. After

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1128-427: 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

1222-622: 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

1316-467: 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

1410-549: 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 the United States and Project Condign in the United Kingdom ), as well as by organisations and individuals have occurred over

1504-442: 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,

1598-476: 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

1692-575: A worker's arm and killing a dog. Arnold interviewed Fred Crisman , an associate of the harborman, who reported having recovered debris from Maury Island in Puget Sound and having witnessed an unusual craft. Crisman showed "white metal" debris to Arnold, who interpreted it as mundane and inconsistent with the harborman's description. Arnold contacted the Air Force, and two officers arrived to investigate. The officers performed interviews, collected

1786-529: 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

1880-432: 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

1974-515: 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

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2068-520: 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

2162-472: 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. Samuel Eaton Thompson A retired railroad worker in his 70s, Thompson claimed that on the evening of March 28, 1950, while driving to his home in Centralia, Washington , he came across a large flying saucer in the woods. The saucer, he claimed,

2256-595: 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

2350-639: 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

2444-810: 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

2538-788: 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

2632-567: 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

2726-494: 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

2820-443: 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

2914-478: The 1947 UFO sighting, Arnold became famous "practically overnight". Arnold's daughter would later recall the family receiving 10,000 letters and constant telephone calls. Arnold was contacted by Raymond A. Palmer , editor of science fiction magazine Amazing Stories , who asked Arnold to investigate the story of two harbormen in Tacoma who reportedly possessed fragments of a "flying saucer". Palmer sent $ 200 to fund

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3008-409: 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

3102-559: 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,

3196-510: 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

3290-638: 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

3384-536: 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

3478-942: 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"

3572-530: 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

3666-556: 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

3760-504: 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

3854-454: The UFO history." Ruppelt observed: The government had thought seriously of prosecuting the men. At the last minute it was decided, after talking to the two men, that the hoax was a harmless joke that had mushroomed, and that the loss of two lives and a B-25 could not be directly blamed on the two men. Arnold was involved with interviewing other UFO witnesses or contactees (notably, he investigated

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3948-411: 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

4042-471: The UFOs are "sort of like sky jellyfish". Arnold added: "My theory might sound funny, but just remember that there are a lot of things in nature that we don't know yet". In 1962, he argued "the so-called unidentified flying objects that have been seen in our atmosphere are not spaceships from another planet at all, but are groups and masses of living organisms that are as much a part of our atmosphere and space as

4136-429: 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

4230-550: 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

4324-465: 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

4418-767: The claims of Samuel Eaton Thompson , one of the first alleged contactees). In spring 1948, Arnold and Science Fiction editor Raymond Palmer collaborated on an article titled "I Did See The Flying Disks", based on Arnold's sighting. In 1950, Arnold self-published a 16-page booklet titled "The Flying Saucer As I Saw It". In 1948, he authored "Are Space Visitors Here?" and "Phantom Lights in Nevada". On April 7, 1950, broadcaster Edward R. Murrow interviewed Arnold, who stated that since June 1947 he had had three additional sightings of nine spacecraft. In January 1951, Cosmopolitan magazine published an article titled "The Disgraceful Flying Saucer Hoax", which accused Arnold of "[igniting]

4512-444: 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

4606-721: 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

4700-597: 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

4794-532: 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 ,

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4888-506: 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,

4982-539: The fragments, and took off in their airplane. While returning to their base in California, during the early hours of August 1, the two officers died when the B-25 Mitchell airplane they were piloting crashed outside of Kelso, Washington. Writing in 1956, Air Force officer Edward J. Ruppelt would conclude "The whole Maury Island Mystery was a hoax. The first, possibly the second-best, and the dirtiest hoax in

5076-467: 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

5170-437: 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

5264-416: The investigation. On July 29, Arnold interviewed a harborman who claimed that one of the objects "began spewing forth what seemed like thousands of newspapers from somewhere on the inside of its center. These newspapers, which turned out to be a white type of very light weight metal, fluttered to earth". The harborman claimed the craft emitted a substance resembling lava rocks that fell onto his boat, breaking

5358-468: 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

5452-505: 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

5546-426: The latter from about 5 to 15 years of age. Thompson claimed to have spent the next 40 hours with the humanoids. They were from Venus , he learned, and had stopped at Earth despite the fact that other Venusian saucers had been shot at by Earth-based military forces. The Venusians said that all of Earth's problems stemmed from astrology : humans were born under different star signs, while Venusians were all born under

5640-502: The life we find in the oceans". In 1962, Kenneth Arnold announced plans to campaign for Governor of Idaho, and won the Republican nomination for the 1962 Idaho lieutenant gubernatorial election ; in the election, Arnold lost to incumbent Democrat W. E. Drevlow . In 1964, Arnold publicly campaigned for Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater , flying an airplane painted with Goldwater '64 slogan "Au-H2O-64". He appeared at

5734-504: 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

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5828-537: 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

5922-691: 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

6016-612: 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 ,

6110-518: 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

6204-557: 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

6298-522: 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

6392-489: 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

6486-479: 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

6580-491: 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,

6674-415: 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,

6768-512: 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),

6862-484: The sign of Venus, as was Thompson. The Venusians further claimed, said Thompson, that they were vegetarian , and that they never grew ill. Thompson also claimed the Venusians were naïve and childlike: they did not know who had built their flying saucers, and seemed to possess little to no curiosity. Thompson claimed that he was the first of many Earthlings who would meet the Venusians, and that after humanity had seen

6956-562: 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

7050-497: The story was literally true, but neither could he accept that the poorly-educated, seemingly sincere Thompson was a blatant liar or prankster. Arnold speculated that Thompson might have had a psychic experience. In 1980, Arnold donated a copy of his 1950 Thompson interview tape to Fate magazine. Clark's article "The Coming of the Venusians" was published in the January 1981 issue of Fate . Clark speculated that Thompson had had

7144-402: 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

7238-962: 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

7332-684: The topic for several years afterward. In 1962, Arnold won the Republican Party's nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Idaho , losing the election of the same year . Arnold was born on March 29, 1915, in Sebeka, Minnesota . He grew up in Scobey, Montana . He was an Eagle Scout and all-state football player in high school. He attended the University of Minnesota in 1934–35. His family was of Lutheran faith. In 1938, he began work for Red Comet, manufacturer of automatic firefighting equipment. He

7426-538: The wisdom of Venusian ways, Jesus Christ would return in 10,000 AD. Thompson claimed to have stayed on the spaceship until March 30, 1950. He tried to photograph the spaceship, he claimed, but the object was too bright to appear on film as more than a blob of light. He could see the Venusians any time he wanted, but could not tell all the information he had learned from them. Afterwards, pilot Kenneth Arnold — whose 1947 sighting had sparked widespread public interest in UFOs — interviewed Thompson. Arnold did not believe

7520-618: 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

7614-410: 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,

7708-536: Was about 80 feet (24 m) across and 30 feet (9 m) tall. Two naked, deeply tanned children, human in form but very attractive, were playing near the craft's entrance ramp. Thompson claimed to have approached to within about 50 feet (15 m) of the saucer, which emitted a strong sun-like heat. Several naked adults — humanoid , attractive, and also deeply tanned — then appeared at the craft's door. After realizing Thompson meant them no harm, they beckoned him closer. The crew consisted of 20 adults and 25 children,

7802-560: 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,

7896-514: 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

7990-432: 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

8084-418: 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

8178-477: 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

8272-467: 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

8366-702: Was promoted to district manager the next year. In 1940, Arnold started his own company, the Great Western Fire Control Supply in Boise, Idaho, which sold and installed fire suppression systems, a job that took him around the Pacific Northwest. In 1941, Arnold married Doris Lowe (1918–1990); they had four daughters. On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold claimed that he saw a series of nine, shiny unidentified flying objects flying past Mount Rainier at speeds that Arnold estimated at

8460-407: 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

8554-515: 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

8648-572: 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

8742-427: 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

8836-433: 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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