DragonSerpent

A president of the USA saw one, and launched a $20 million inquiry to find out more about it. The world's champion boxer saw one as he jogged in New York's Central Park. A caribbean island leader saw one, and urged the United Nations to debate it. UN Secretary General U Thant once called them "the most important problem facing the world next to the war in Vietnam." That was along time ago but unidentified flying objects are still being spotted.
Millions of responsible, reliable people have reported UFOs. Police, priests, politicians and pilots have all been astonished by strange craft performing inexplicable antics in the sky. A growing number of people claim they have actually met crewmembers from these curious glowing shapes. Some have recieved injuries from the experience which have defied the best treatments that human medicine can devise. Some have even died from the eerie encounters that proved too close. And despite the sceptical governments and scientists who say such things do not exist, UFOs have been and are being watched all over the world.

A UFO or unidentified flying object in the original, literal sense is any airborne object or optical phenomenon, detected visually or by radar, whose nature is not readily known. Interest in these objects stems from arguments that some of them display anomalous characteristiscs, especially the continued speculation that some of them may be the products of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Perhaps the best scientifically accepted definition of a UFO was provided by the late astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek: "A UFO is the reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky or upon the land the appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic and luminescent behaviour of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification, if one is possible."

UFOs and popular culture

Regardless of any ultimate explanation, UFOs constitute an international cultural phenomenon of the last half-century. Since the mid-1900's, UFOs have been the subject of a very large number of books, motion pictures, songs, documentaries and other media. UFO topics were amongst the most popular on early computer Bulletin board systems, and millions of people have some degree of interest in the subject. There have also been notable hoaxes involving UFO reports, some which have received substantial press attention.

UFOs have played a role in tourism, such as in Roswell, New Mexico, site of a supposed UFO crash.

A 1996 Gallup poll reported that 71% of the United States' population believed that the government was covering up some information about UFOs. Another Gallup poll in 2001 found that 33% of respondents "believe that extraterrestrials have visited the Earth sometime in the past." [2] These two poll results may seem confusing or contradictory if one considers only the extraterrestrial hypothesis as an explanation for UFOs. The poll results may also simply suggest that a greater percentage of those polled believe that the U.S. Government has been less than forthright in regards to UFOs than accept the ETH.

A 2002 Roper poll for the Sci Fi channel found similar results, but with more people believing UFOs were extraterrestrial craft. Again about 70% felt the government wasn't sharing everything it knew about UFOs or extraterrestrial life. But 56% thought UFOs were real craft and 48% that UFOs had visited the Earth. The younger a person was, the more likely they were to hold such beliefs.

Typical reported characteristics of UFOs

Saucer, toy-top, or disk-shaped "craft" without visible or audible propulsion. (day and night)
Rapidly-moving lights or lights with apparent ability to rapidly change direction — the earliest mention of their motion was given as "saucers skipping on water"
Large triangular "craft" or triangular light pattern
Cigar-shaped "craft" with lighted windows (Meteor fireballs are sometimes reported this way).

The number of different shapes, sizes, and configurations of claimed UFOs has been large, with descriptions of chevrons, equilateral triangles, spheres, domes, diamonds, shapeless black masses, eggs, and cylinders. Skeptics argue this diversity of shapes, size and configurations points to a socio-psychological explanation. Other researchers argue that the large diversity of UFO shapes points to a possible paraphysical origin. Still others argue that there is a large diversity in the shapes and sizes of human flying craft, reflecting different origins, propulsion systems, and purposes, so such diversity in UFOs is not necessarily unexpected or inexplicable.

Another argument is that the true underlying shape may, in some cases, be concealed or distorted by the ionization of air around the objects, believed by some researcher advocates, such as NASA engineers Paul Hill and James McCampbell, to be a characteristic of the propulsion system. Air ionization could also partly explain the diversity of colors reported, as different air molecules are excited at different energy levels, as well as the electric, neon-like glow around the objects often reported, similar to what happens with polar auroras. Another view is that the shape may be concealed or distorted by space-time distortions arising from an anti-gravity propulsion system. However, some feel that such speculation is overly premature because the very actuality of UFOs as alien craft is itself problematic.

Other advocates, arguing for the non-conventional interpretation, reply that the volume of impressive sightings reported by witnesses, from commercial airline pilots to United States presidents, and occasionally captured on film and radar, possesses strong consistency and cannot be explained away simply as mundane phenomena (weather balloons, aircraft, Venus, etc.).

One writer contends that UFO mass sightings--sometimes called "flaps"--are "a hard core of genuinely unusual sightings ... surrounded by a great deal more misidentification, wishful thinking and general flakiness."

Other researchers, such as Jacques Vallee, argue that if UFO sightings are motivated by some mechanism through which the public can release hidden fears and satisfy a psychological need for fantasies, why did "UFO waves" not coincide with such science-fiction feats such as Orson Welles' radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds in 1938, or the motion-picture versions of Flash Gordon (1936-37)? Vallee points out that the theory regarding how the general public generates and propagates UFO reports as a way of releasing psychological tensions, is denied by the absence of correlation between notable periods of interest in science fiction and major peaks of UFO activity. It should also be noted that no single, comprehensive "psychological" theory to explain the generation of all UFO reports has yet been proposed. A notable attempt on the basis of his theory of archetypes was made by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung in his book _Flying Saucers_ (1959). Jung, however, also felt that at least some UFOs were "nuts and bolts" craft, based on physical evidence such as simultaneous radar contact.

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