People have reported odd unidentified objects in the skies for decades, including crashes at Roswell, New Mexico, and flashing lights above New Jersey (UFOs).
But do these reports indicate an alien invasion? And are they really unaccounted for?
The Pentagon had sponsored a program to specifically address that subject for years, according to a recent New York Times study. According to the Times, the program discovered multiple accounts of aircraft that appeared to fly at great speeds without any indication of propulsion.
Even while the vast majority of UFO sightings that have been analyzed have been explained by common Earthly occurrences like weather balloons, flares, or rockets, some still leave specialists baffled and searching the skies for tiny green men. Here are some of the most puzzling UFO encounters, from white Tic Tacs to flashing lights. [7 Things That Are Frequently Mistook for UFOs]
One of the most remarkable UFO sightings, which was seen on film, was highlighted by The Times investigation. The New York Times stated that two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets, commonly known as Super Hornet or Hornet, came into contact with an unidentified flying object in 2004 close to San Diego. The item appeared to be moving quickly, was encircled by a bright halo, and was rotating. One of the fighter pilots reportedly yelled, “There’s a whole fleet of them,” according to audio from the incident, as reported by the Times.
Cmdr. David Fravor, a Navy pilot who saw the strange occurrence, recounted seeing what resembled “a white Tic Tac, approximately the same size as a Hornet, 40 feet [12 meters] long with no wings,” according to The Washington Post. The strange object accelerated “faster than I’d ever seen anything in my life” as Fravor’s plane approached it, he claimed.
According to Fravor, who spoke to The Washington Post, he is certain that an alien was the object’s source.
A 55-year-old farmer from Trans-en-Provence, France, claimed to have seen a flying saucer in the area in 1981 after hearing an odd, high-pitched sound. He claimed that the lead-colored UFO lifted off nearly instantly.
This encounter is special since the farmer informed the police right away, who collected soil and plant samples, according to a report on the incident. The Groupe d’Études et d’Informations sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés (GEPAN), France’s UFO-investigating organization, stated the chemical evidence was consistent with soil heating and pressure from a hefty object. Additionally, they discovered residues of zinc and phosphate as well as indications of anomalies in the neighboring plants.
The squished plants, according to skeptics, could have been caused by tires, as automobiles were heard in the area at the time the farmer reported seeing them. Another theory is that the French military was testing an experimental craft because there was a military base nearby.
In general, pilots and military personnel who spend their entire days in the air tend to report some of the most reliable or trustworthy sightings. One such incident was recorded by the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) in 2013, according to Vice. The man, a former fighter pilot, astronaut, and commercial pilot, was in Athens, Texas, with his family late one night in 2013 when he observed what appeared to be an orange, burning fireball.
The man told the NUFORC, “When I looked up into the sky, I observed a rather enormous, orange, blazing ball moving overhead [at] right about 90 degrees of elevation.”
After some time, a trio of related objects flew in the same directions. Two other objects went in the same direction three minutes later. The man claimed that the items made no sound and appeared to glow due to air heating. He said he and his family tried to record the items on their iPhones, but the blurry, dark video was unable to make sense of.
They moved far more quickly than aircraft or orbiting satellites (like the International Space Station), yet they moved much more slowly than meteors and did not alter brightness as a meteor would when it entered the atmosphere, the caller explained. I don’t know how to explain what we observed.
The NUFORC also received a report from an airline captain who was flying between Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, when he observed dazzling blue lights over Mount Shasta in California that seemed to be considerably brighter than the stars in the area usually do.
The captain said in a report that “the two lights were about an inch apart in the windscreen and the size of normal stars.” Then “one of the stars” just dimmed out over the course of approximately 10 seconds, followed by the other star, which similarly dimmed out totally in about 10 seconds.”
He said that because the lights remained immobile, they were neither satellites nor falling stars. What is really out there in terms of UFOs?
“There were no clouds in the sky, and it was completely clear as we flew. These two lights were sitting there, sort of like ships hiding in plain sight, but they weren’t orbiting in the traditional west to east direction that most satellites do “The captain gave the NUFORC a report.
The lights also appeared to be much higher than the plane’s level, which was traveling at a height of 38,000 feet (11,580 m).
There are many of sightings that turn out to be military flares, strange cloud formations, weather phenomena, or complex hoaxes for every unexplained encounter. For instance, according to GEPAN’s database, only 7% of all reported UFO encounters are actually unexplained.
Before it was shut down in 1969, the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book program, which started looking into UFO sightings in the 1940s, had collected more than 12,000 reported sightings. In the end, the majority of those Project Blue Book sightings were explained. While a few cases remained unsolved, program participants doubted that they involved genuine alien sightings or unheard-of physical occurrences.
According to a report in the Project Blue Book collection, “if more immediate, detailed, objective data on the unknowns had been available, undoubtedly these, too, could have been explained.” It’s probably impossible to rule out all unidentified sightings, the paper said, because human elements are involved, including subjective opinions and interpretations rather than precise scientific facts.
