UFO Sightings: Fact or Fiction?

 Is there life on other planets?  Have they come to conquer Earth?

Most people believe there are galaxies that support life beyond the Milky Way.  They also believe that creatures from faraway planets have developed technology that allows them to study Man.  Every society has a record of inexplicable UFO sightings.

UFO’s or Unidentified Flying Objects generally refer to mysterious airborne objects that have been observed and recorded by people.  When one mentions UFO’s, images of extra-terrestrial aircraft hovering above Earth are conjured.  People have taken photographs and video footage of various mysterious lights; some have glowing spheres of light going around a thin, almost-flat aircraft, others are disk-shaped, moving at hyper speed.

One of the most familiar UFO sightings was the incident in Nuremberg, Germany that happened in 1561.  German newspapers published people’s accounts of several airborne objects with plates, tubes and crosses, and red and blue lights.  The objects appeared to be battling each other against the night sky.

In 1947, Kenneth Arnold, a businessman, reported nine UFO’s flying over Washington’s Mountain Rainier.  Arnold said that the UFO’s looked like giant saucers, and newspapers started referring to UFO’s as ‘flying saucers.”

The U.S. government keeps a record of UFO sightings.  There are eye witness accounts, photographs and video recordings of flying saucers.  Before the 1960's, the United States kept the information confidential, since it posses a threat to national security.  Later on, government officials explained that most UFO sightings are just atmospheric events.

In 1948 and 1952, the U.S. Air Force began studies on UFO sightings.  Project Sign, Project Grudge, and Project Blue Book aimed to determine the exact cause of these aerial phenomena, and to determine if reports of UFO sightings really pose a threat to the security of the United States.  They also had a third goal, and that was to see if they would be able to clone the technology used by these extra-terrestrials.

Project Blue Book, the last of the UFO sightings projects was closed in 1969.  By the following year, the military was able to categorize the various sightings into ‘identified’ or ‘unidentified’ categories.  Most were under the first category, meaning that the incidents could be explained, although many people have tried contesting the classification.

The United States Air Force explained that due to the reliability of the testimonies, and the credibility of the witnesses, they weren't able to find conclusive evidence regarding the existence of life forms from other planets visiting their nearest neighbor.  While this has been the result of the investigation, many people still believe that one day, they will be proven right.