The number of UFOs reported in Canada during 1989 to 2008.
Comparisons with other databases, such as the National UFO Reporting Center in the U.S., show a general increase in the number of reported UFOs over the past several years. Why the public is being told that UFOs are on the decline is not clear.
Remember, however, that this number of UFO reports is raw UFO cases, and many turn out to be aircraft or satellites. Still, there are dozens of high-quality unknowns each year.
When someone asks, “Do UFOs really exist?” do you answer with a yes or a no? This is actually a trick question, because the question itself is not phrased correctly.
UFOs are, quite simply, Unidentified Flying Objects, and they certainly exist! There are thousands of reports of unusual objects filed every year with various organizations by people who did not know what it was they were seeing. To them, they were definitely unidentified objects, mostly seen flying in the sky.
WHAT ARE THEY?
There are six basic categories of explanations for UFOs:
• Misinterpretations of conventional objects or common phenomena;
• Hoaxes;
• Unusual or poorly understood natural phenomena;
• Secret government or military projects;
• Hallucinations;
• Something else.
Included in the last category is every speculative idea ever proposed concerning the extraterrestrial nature of UFOs and alien spacecraft. This quite naturally leaves the category wide open for anyone to propose his or her pet theory and innovation. These range from the relatively passive “man from Mars” to the extragalactic, and on through other dimensions and time travel. The motivations as to what they want from us range from benign alien anthropologists watching our daily routines to preparation for insidious oppression, colonization, or slavery.
UFOs are merely objects in the sky that defy explanation by an observer. Obviously, such objects exist. Some stimulus was in the sky to affect an observation, and thus cause a UFO sighting.
The question that was probably intended is: “Do flying saucers from other planets exist?” The answer to this question is one that has led many skeptics and believers to go at each others’ throats in vicious arguments.
Polls have been conducted regarding people’s belief in UFOs as alien spacecraft. As early as 1957, a poll found that 25 percent of Americans thought there was a possibility that flying saucers were from outer space. The first Gallup Poll on the subject in 1966 found that about 5 percent of the population had seen a UFO and 46 percent believed UFOs were real objects and not imaginary.
In 1971, a survey of engineers and academics found that 54 percent believed UFOs were real and that 32 percent thought they were from outer space.
By the time of the next Gallup Poll in 1973, numbers had changed somewhat. About 11 percent of the population believed they had seen UFOs and 51 percent thought UFOs were real. A Canadian Gallup Poll in 1974 found Canadians were a bit more skeptical: 36 percent said UFOs were real, and 8 percent said they had seen a UFO.
A Roper Poll in 1974 showed 40 percent of Americans “believed in UFOs,” and a Canadian Gallup Poll in 1978 found that 46 percent thought UFOs were real and 10 percent had seen one. An American Gallup Poll in 1978 found 9 percent had seen a UFO and 57 percent thought they were real. Almost 10 years later, in 1987, the same number said they had seen UFOs, while slightly less, about 49 percent, thought UFOs were real.
Among the intellectual elite, it seems that UFOs are a given commodity. A 1975 poll of the French branch of Mensa — the international group for which you need to have an IQ in the top 98 percent of the population — found that almost all (93 percent) believed in UFOs, 52 percent thought they were from outer space, and 49 percent had seen one. A survey of American Mensa members found lower but still significant results: 64 percent thought they were spaceships from other planets and 16 percent had seen UFOs. In 1984, the magazine Psychology Today polled its readers and found that about half of them “believed” in UFOs.
A Scripps News Service Poll in 1995 found that 50 percent “believed” in UFOs while a Newsweek magazine poll found only 48 percent believed “reports of UFOs are real.”
In 2002 the Sci Fi Channel enlisted Roper to poll Americans about UFOs and found that about 48 percent believed aliens have visited Earth and 14 percent said they or someone they know had a “close encounter” with a UFO.
Finally, in 2008, Scripps News Service polled Americans about their belief in UFOs. They found that 8 percent of the population had seen a UFO but 20 percent know someone who has seen a UFO. About 30 percent believe aliens from space have visited Earth.
All these polls show that about half the population believes UFOs are real, although what that means is a matter of debate. More significantly, about 10 percent of all North Americans believe they have seen a UFO.
The term flying saucer is very liberally applied to UFOs by news media and most laypeople. The term was first coined in 1947 when pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed he had seen silver disc-like objects flying near Mt. Rainier in Washington State. When asked by a reporter to describe what he had seen, Arnold replied that the appearance of the objects’ flight was that they moved as if they were plates or saucers skimming across water. A headline writer quickly took the analogy as flying saucers, and the name stuck in the public mind.
Arnold’s objects were in a special category of what are called today daylight discs. These are in the minority when compared with the bulk of UFO reports; most UFO sightings are of objects known as nocturnal lights. Such objects are simply lights in the night sky that behave in ways that seem mysterious to their observers. Many of these turn out to have explanations such as an aircraft, satellite, star, planet or meteor.
What kind of people see UFOs? While some skeptics might answer that UFO witnesses are delusional, gullible, or uneducated, the reality is that the demographics of UFO witnesses cuts across all ages, socioeconomic statuses, educational backgrounds, occupations, and cultures. Furthermore, many witnesses are people with significant training in observation and judgment. Unfortunately, many UFO witnesses are reluctant to tell others of their sightings for fear of being ridiculed by skeptics. This attitude is changing, thankfully, and it appears that society as a whole is becoming more accepting of those who have had remarkable experiences.
DID YOU KNOW?
UFOs have
been reported by astronomers, pilots,
and air traffic controllers.
Let’s start with the sun, but let’s make it a bit smaller. Imagine that it is the size of a pea held in the palm of your hand. On this scale, the Earth is actually invisible, but would be about 1.2 metres away from the pea. But where would the next nearest pea be? That is, where, using this scale model of size and distance in our local astronomical neighbourhood, would the next nearest star be located? In front of your home, a block away? Farther downtown?
The answer is that if our star, the sun, was as small as a pea in your hand, the next nearest pea (Proxima Centuari) would be almost 320 kilometres away.
That’s how vast the space between stars is, and how far away we are from even the nearest one. However, the