“The fact that people sometimes do not understand some facts in science is because they are faced with phenomena that remain unexplained,” said an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Shadow UFO Research Program was launched in 2007 and was largely funded at the behest of Harry Reid, a former Senate Majority Leader with a long interest in space phenomena.
Disasters in Roswell, encounters with unidentified objects in New Mexico and flashing lights over New Jersey … For many decades, citizens of different countries of the world have looked at the sky and reported mysterious unidentified objects (UFOs). But are these sightings signs of an alien visit? And are they really inexplicable?
Funded research
A recent investigation by the New York Times found that the Pentagon has funded a program over the years to answer just this question. “The program found several reports of planes that appeared to be traveling at high speeds and showed no signs of movement,” the Times reported.
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While the vast majority of research UFO sightings have led to the conclusion that these are common phenomena such as balloons, flares or rockets, some facts still plague experts, causing them to tirelessly speculate as they gaze at the sky and the little green people. From white Tic Tacs to flashing lights, this article presents some of the most mysterious UFO sightings.
Fighter pilot meeting
The Times investigation revealed one of the most intriguing UFO sightings ever recorded on video.
“In 2004, two F / A-18F fighters (also called Super Hornets or Hornets) collided with a mysterious flying object near San Diego,” reports The New York Times. The incomprehensible flying machine seemed to be moving at a very high speed. It was surrounded by a glowing halo and rotated as it moved. According to the interlocutor, one of the fighter pilots exclaimed: "They have a whole fleet."
One of the naval pilots David Fravor, who witnessed the strange event, recalled that the object resembled a white Tic Tac, and was about the same size as the Hornet (12 meters long, without wings).
“When his plane approached the UFO, the mysterious object departed at a speed that I had never seen before,” Fravor said. The pilot, for his part, is convinced that the object's origin was extraterrestrial.
Meeting in France
In 1981, a French farmer claimed to have heard a strange high pitched sound. Soon, he saw a flying saucer nearby. According to him, she took off almost immediately.
What makes this case unique is that the farmer immediately contacted the local police, who were able to take samples of the land and plants. This is reported in the incident report. Experts from the French UFO Investigation Authority, formerly Groupe d'Études et d'Informations sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés (GEPAN), said the chemical data was consistent with the heating of the soil and the pressure of the large object. They also found traces of zinc and phosphate and signs of anomalies on nearby plants.
However, skeptics were convinced that the moisture on the plants could have settled due to exhaust gases from cars that were passing in the area around the same time as this incident. Since there was a military base nearby, another explanation is that the French military was testing an experimental vessel.
The look of a retired astronaut
In general, some of the most authoritative or credible sightings come from those in the skies all day: pilots and military personnel.
According to the vice president of the National UFO Information Center (NUFORC), he recorded one such sighting in 2013. Late in the evening, a man, a retired commercial pilot, fighter pilot and astronaut, was looking up at the sky with his family in Athens, Texas, when he noticed an orange, glowing fireball hanging in it.
“When I looked up at the sky, I saw a rather large orange ball of light moving rapidly overhead,” a man told NUFORC.
A few minutes later, a group of three similar objects followed the same flight path. Three minutes later, two more objects flew along the same route. According to the person, the lights did not make a sound and appeared to glow from atmospheric heating.
The pilot and his family tried to record objects using the iPhone, although the grainy dark video was difficult to decipher.
“They moved much faster than orbiting satellites, such as the International Space Station or airplanes, but much slower than meteors, and did not change brightness like a meteor falling into the atmosphere,” said an eyewitness. "I have no explanation for what we saw."
Lights over Mount Shasta
Another report from NUFORC came from an airline captain who flew between Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. He noticed blue lights over Mount Shasta in California that appeared much brighter than the stars shining in the area.
The two lights were about an inch apart on the windshield and about the size of normal stars. Then one of the stars just fogged up for about 10 seconds. And after another 10 seconds, it went out. The lights were stationary, so they didn't look like stars or satellites.
“These two lights did not match the typical W / E orbital path that most satellites meet,” the captain told NUFORC. "The lights were also well above the level of the plane, which flew at 38,000 feet."
Unexplained phenomena
There are dozens of explanations for each obscure phenomenon, which turn out to be military outbreaks, strange cloud formations, weather conditions or complex hoaxes. For example, the GEPAN database estimates that only 7% of all alleged UFO sightings really have no explanation.
In the 1940s, the US Air Force began investigating UFO sightings, and this program, called Project Blue Book, recorded over 12,000 sightings before it was closed in 1969. Most of these observations were eventually explained. Although some of them remained incomprehensible.
“If faster, more detailed, objective data on unknown objects were available, perhaps all of this could be explained,” says a report in the Blue Book project. "However, the fact that in these cases there is a human factor, personal impressions and interpretations, and not accurate scientific data, it is unlikely that all unidentified observations will be eliminated."
Maya Muzashvili
