Diana Pasulka, a professor at the University of North Carolina, notes that myths and religions are both means for dealing with unimaginable experiences. It’s useful to consider UFOs as a cultural phenomenon.

I remain skeptical that intelligent beings with vastly superior technology would travel trillion of miles just to press down our wheat. UFOs are part of the landscape of conspiracy theories, including accounts of abduction by aliens and crop circles created by aliens. But they aren’t convinced by the evidence to date because it is unreliable, or because there are so many other more mundane explanations. Scientists do not discount the idea of aliens. Even if intelligent aliens do exist, there are a number of reasons why we might not have found them and they might not have found us. The absence of evidence for intelligent aliens is called the Fermi Paradox. So researchers have recast the question “Are we alone?” to “Where are they?” This confidence has fueled an active search for intelligent life, which has been unsuccessful so far. There are many uncertainties in the Drake Equation, but interpreting it in the light of recent exoplanet discoveries makes it very unlikely that we are the only, or the first, advanced civilization. Astronomers use the Drake Equation to estimate the number of technological alien civilizations in our galaxy. As astronomer and ace exoplanet-hunter Geoff Marcy, puts it, “The universe is apparently bulging at the seams with the ingredients of biology.” There are many steps in the progression from Earths with suitable conditions for life to intelligent aliens hopping from star to star. Each of these Earth-like planets is a potential biological experiment, and there have been billions of years since they formed for life to develop and for intelligence and technology to emerge.Īstronomers are very confident there is life beyond the Earth. The nearest of these habitable planets are less than 20 light years away, in our cosmic “back yard.” Extrapolating from these results leads to a projection of 300 million habitable worlds in our galaxy. Some of these exoplanets are considered habitable, since they are close to the Earth’s mass and at the right distance from their stars to have water on their surfaces. While UFOs continue to swirl in the popular culture, scientists are trying to answer the big question that is raised by UFOs: Are we alone?Īstronomers have discovered over 4,000 exoplanets, or planets orbiting other stars, a number that doubles every two years. Most UFO sightings have been in the United States. Most astronomers find the hypothesis of alien visits implausible, so they concentrate their energy on the exciting scientific search for life beyond the Earth. Sightings concentrate in evening hours, particularly on Fridays, when many people are relaxing with one or more drinks.Ī few people, like former NASA employee James Oberg, have the fortitude to track down and find conventional explanations for decades of UFO sightings. Many people who say they have seen UFOs are either dog walkers or smokers. Reports of visits from UFOs inexplicably peaked about six years ago.

Such bright objects are familiar to astronomers but are often not recognized by members of the public. Over half can be attributed to meteors, fireballs and the planet Venus. It’s curious that Asia and Africa have so few sightings despite their large populations, and even more surprising that the sightings stop at the Canadian and Mexican borders. The majority of UFOs appear to people in the United States. The fact that the Roswell incident was soon explained as the crash landing of a military high-altitude balloon didn’t stem a tide of new sightings. In the United States, “ground zero” for UFOs occurred in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico.

Air Force studies of UFOs have been going on since the 1940s.

Recent ufo sightings