What Are UFOs?
UFOs are explainable in prosaic terms. Still, it is also true that, no matter how hard even the best analysts try, certain reports defy an easy explanation. Some of these things appear to be somebody’s technology, doing things that are supposed to be impossible. To whom they belong is one of the magical questions.
The UFO phenomenon is not simply a fun, diversionary topic. It is not something to dabble with during moments of boredom. It is mind-bending and reality-shattering.
Wherever you travel, no matter the country or culture, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who has not heard of UFOs. The term is recognized around the world. It is, in fact, a worldwide brand.
There is a good reason for this. All you need to do is ask around a bit, and you will find many people with their own UFO stories. Often it is their own personal sighting, and sometimes multiple sightings. Sometimes it concerns a dramatic story told to them by a family member, often with no one else in the room. Now and then, a military retiree, perhaps a father, mother, uncle, or grandparent will whisper such an account. Those stories, too, are out there, many of them.
These seemingly impossible reports come not only from ordinary people, but also from military personnel, and like those from the military, silence is usually the rule for civilians when it comes to UFO reports. Military personnel has their secrecy protocols, of course, but trauma and fear of ridicule usually serve well enough to keep most people quiet.
The Modern UFO Phenomenon
I hardly have to convince anyone in this day and age that there is such a thing as the UFO phenomena; although whether or not you believe this is caused by alien beings is another question of course. Since the end of the second world war, thousands upon thousands of sightings have occurred, UFOs have been caught on photographs and film of varying quality, and in recent years the government has even released a handful of clips of its pilots chasing some UFOs before they fly out of sight and radar range.
If anything, there’s almost too much evidence! The CIA has made public almost 800,000 reports of UFO sightings just in the USA. This is already far too many to make sense as being extraterrestrial visits. As an advanced species, they can surely take it all in in a single trip, a few trips at the most. But even if they were coming here for their annual holidays, it still wouldn’t be anywhere near the million or so global sightings of the last few decades. So, what’s going on? Surely, with this many sightings, the governments are studying this as a top priority, aren’t they? As it turns out, no they’re not.
Strangely, for a phenomenon so spectacular as possible beings from outer space visiting our skies and our people, there is no comprehensive global database for public access, which would allow for easy categorization and analysis of the collated information. Why not? Surely something so important would be of the utmost interest? Surely the first instinct upon seeing unknown phenomena is to note the details, and record as much data as possible, and then study the individual case and the patterns that emerge from them? Under what possible circumstance would it make sense for the government not to do any of this, and further, for them to discourage anyone else from doing so, by dismissing the incidents as unworthy of investigation?
Several explanations might explain such a bizarre response on the part of the government to possible aliens, all of which pose problems:
The government doesn’t know much about UFOs and doesn’t want to. They are happy to remain uninformed because they genuinely believe that all UFO sightings can be explained by natural, terrestrial means, such as conventional aircraft or weather balloons. This explanation becomes increasingly hard to support over time as the numbers of sightings increase, particularly now that the government acknowledges the existence of UFOs by releasing clips of their pilots chasing them. And yet, still, no database, much less huge government-sponsored scientific investigation. Really?
The government knows a lot about UFOs and they are a significant issue, as in some cases they are alien spacecraft. But they are keeping this knowledge secret from the public in a huge 80-year long cover-up to avoid panic. This would be a huge over-step, wouldn’t it? Are the government gatekeepers of important factual information? Should they hide important facts from us for decades, keeping us unaware of the nature of our reality? Isn’t it their job to be the administrators and facilitators of our lives, not to artificially construct a false reality for us without our knowledge or consent?
A further suggestion is that the alien visitors ask the government to keep them secret, in which case why would such an advanced race not just keep a much lower profile and not whiz about in our skies in ships lit up like Christmas! In any case, shouldn’t the government’s first loyalty be to us, their citizens? Shouldn’t our government say, “we represent the people; our knowledge is their knowledge”?
The government knows a lot about UFOs, and they are not a significant issue. However, they choose to keep the information on which they base this conclusion a secret from the public. This could be because having a public with confused and divided beliefs on this is useful to them. Or perhaps even because they were behind the UFO phenomenon or they are aware who is. In which case, the scientific study would not only be a complete waste of time and money, but it would also threaten to reveal the deception. Could our governments carry out deception on this scale? Would it benefit them?
Or perhaps the government is interested in UFOs and studies them to a reasonable degree, they just haven’t found an explanation yet, but they are honest about their findings on UFO issues. Those who have had experiences that the government has dismissed or not investigated at all just have unrealistic expectations of government priorities. We’ll have a look at the level of honesty in some government UFO responses in future chapters.
Which one seems most probable in respect of the government? Are they all working together on a matter of such universal importance?
Let’s have a look at some of the patterns of UFO incidents the government would have been able to identify, had they chosen to record and study the phenomenon, and the evidence they leave behind which could be extensively studied.
Cattle mutilation: There’s no denying this is a real phenomenon. But is it UFO related?
Lights or craft in the sky: Often photographed or filmed.
Landing craft: On occasion humanoid figures are also seen.
Alien abduction: Often remembered under hypnosis. Often with emotional trauma, fear, and sometimes physical injuries.
Crashed UFOs or near crashes: For such advanced people, who travel so far in space, there seems to be an inordinate number of crashes! A single aircraft may leave some wreckage, or sometimes a group of UFOs is flying together, one gets in trouble, spits out some material and they all fly off.
Clusters of UFO events – many UFO experiences are not one-off events. They often occur over consecutive nights in the same place. In some examples, events take place years apart but at one specific location, or in connection to one individual or group.
Lights in the sky, sometimes attached to a silent craft, appear to be the most common UFO experience. Some are seen by a large population. The interesting thing to note is that this craft rarely seems to be doing something purposeful. In flight, they tend to fly slowly before suddenly disappearing or zooming off, or they dart about in the sky, zooming from one direction to another, sometimes stopping mid-flight for a quick pause and then continuing in no particular direction. This is what is colloquially referred to as “fannying about”; it’s display behavior. Vehicles are primarily used to get from A to B; this isn’t what most UFOs appear to be doing. Neither do they appear to be behaving as if surveying land or observing anything in particular. The main purpose of their actions appears to be simply to be seen; why? Get on Instagram! Surely zipping about isn’t what an alien would make a life-threateningly dangerous, multi-light year intergalactic journey to the Earth for?
This is in stark contrast to the theory that the government cannot reveal the aliens’ existence, nor the aliens reveal their own, because they wish to remain “secret”, or because the public is not ready to accept their existence. If this were the case, they simply wouldn’t keep pointlessly fannying about overhead!
With the technology the space-traveling alien civilization must have, it’s difficult to understand why they all need such bright lights anyway. Surely they navigate using some advanced version of sat nav and radar? And if they do need to see where they’re going, why not fly around in the day?
Even with the logical difficulties in accepting one of the possible explanations for these phenomena, with so many reported sightings and experiences being reported, it is difficult to see how our governments seem largely happy to completely dismiss this as of no particular significance, or as unworthy of investigation. It’s even more difficult to see how or why most mainstream scientists appear to agree. Without extensive scientific investigation, how can these seemingly otherworldly experiences be explained, either as terrestrial or otherwise? Something is happening. Why aren’t we more interested in finding out what it is?
It feels as if mainstream scientists have given up on the modern UFO phenomena. Elvis has left the building. Leaving us, the great unwashed, at the mercy of the government’s contempt for us and our ignorance, with no one to help us interpret what we’re being shown.
In the following chapters, we’ll perform a closer, and more distant, examination of several examples of the above patterns. We’ll look at the examples from the perspectives of the people directly involved, as well as from those further removed from the events themselves, wider society, and from our perspective which in some cases is many decades later. We want to look at not just what happened, but the effect of these events, and think about who would stand to gain from such effects. From this, we can consider what explanations would make the most sense.
What Does the Public Think of The Possibilities of Alien Existence?
The results speak for themselves; a survey is being conducted to know the opinion of people about the reality and their perceptions about their likelihood. In the shocking result, 60% of the people said that maybe they exist somewhere in space, but they don’t believe that they exist on Earth. About 22% of the people said aliens even come to Earth and they firmly believe in their existence. In the survey, 8% of the people believed their presence in the movies only and 9% of the people said that they firmly do not believe and there is no such possibility of their existence. In that search, SETI is actively searching throughout through radio signal analysis by their patterns and intelligent communication. They are trying to find the noise pattern by searching through cosmic activities. In some incidents, they confirmed to have received anomalous signals but not any kind of patterns that can explain the radio communication through signals.
All that means the likelihood of their presence is showing optimism and opportunity in the future to prove their involvement with the humans. However, to get any conclusive evidence or eye-popping proof, humans may have to wait for many years to come.
Many technological efforts have been made to track any unusual activity in the space. The radio waves have been sent in outer space until eternity and many messages in the form of signals are also being thrown into space. Many trusted sources have also been said to have received responses that would indicate such possibilities of life exists outside the space. To search for such possibility an equation is also being drafted by Frank Drake that calculates the chances of inter. Many expert scientists also argue that we live with the mental frame that is uncommon in space for the existence of life.
On the other side of the question “Do Aliens Exist?”, there is a question of the rare Earth hypothesis. In one of the books, a physicist lists a total of 33 characteristics a planet must tend to be supporting life. He estimates the probability of any such combination that can be found in the universe is less than one in a million trillion.
In another book, astronomer Guillermo and theologian Richards carry the notion further ahead by asserting that our place in the universe is not special but also designed for the discovery of life.
