People Are Seeing UFOs Everywhere
Posted: 04-26-2017 12:35 AM
Why have sightings of unidentified flying objects around the nation more than tripled since 2001? Why is July the busiest month for U.F.O. sightings? Why did they spike in Texas in 2008, or in New Mexico in September 2015?
And how in the world, or out of it, has Manhattan racked up New York State’s second-highest tally of U.F.O. sightings in this century?
These questions and many others emerge from the first comprehensive statistical summary of so-called close encounters: 121,036 eyewitness accounts, organized county by county in each state and the District of Columbia, from 2001 to 2015.
The unlikely compendium, “U.F.O. Sightings Desk Reference,” is the work of a couple in Syracuse, who crunched unruly data on U.F.O. reports collected by two volunteer organizations: the Mutual U.F.O. Network, or Mufon, and the National U.F.O. Reporting Center, or Nuforc.
It is the reference “U.F.O. researchers dreamed of having,” Gordon G. Spear, emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at Sonoma State University in California, writes in the foreword.
The book contains no narrative or anecdotal accounts, just 371 pages of charts and graphs that slice and dice the geography and timing of the incidents and the various shapes that witnesses reported: flying circles, spheres, triangles, discs, ovals, cigars.
Many of the sightings turn out to be explainable, the authors say, but a small percentage defy resolution.
The government officially quit the U.F.O. business in 1968, with the finding in the Condon report from the University of Colorado that there was nothing significant to investigate, although some 30 percent of the incidents were unexplained.
Mufon’s 500 volunteer investigators, however, continue to check out many of the sightings reported to the group. Roger Marsh, a Mufon spokesman, said that of the 270 cases his group investigated in Manhattan from 2002 through 2016, 44 eluded explanation and remained “unknown.”
One of the most intriguing occurred on the afternoon of Sept. 17, 2011, when a man on the roof terrace of the New Museum on the Bowery photographed a fast-moving diamond-shaped object with windows and flashing blue and red lights against the TriBeCa skyline.
According to Mufon, it resembled an unknown flying object photographed in Round Rock, Tex., two weeks earlier.
For the U.F.O. enthusiast, the pages of graphs and charts are a treasure trove of hard-to-find detail.
The District of Columbia, with 9,856 people per square mile, had the fewest sightings: 154. (A political snub from deep space?) Wyoming, with 5.8 people per square mile, had more than twice as many: 337.
Fireballs made up nearly 8 percent of the sightings in Indiana (230) and fewer than 5 percent in Colorado (157).
California, the most populous state, led the nation in U.F.O. reports (15,836, more than the next two states, Florida and Texas, combined). Los Angeles County alone had more sightings than 40 states, followed by Maricopa County, Ariz., which includes Phoenix.
The arduous breakdown by the nation’s more than 3,000 counties was notable for revealing clusters of sightings in remote regions, places where U.F.O.s are almost never mentioned. But every county in the United States appears to have seen at least one U.F.O.
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And how in the world, or out of it, has Manhattan racked up New York State’s second-highest tally of U.F.O. sightings in this century?
These questions and many others emerge from the first comprehensive statistical summary of so-called close encounters: 121,036 eyewitness accounts, organized county by county in each state and the District of Columbia, from 2001 to 2015.
The unlikely compendium, “U.F.O. Sightings Desk Reference,” is the work of a couple in Syracuse, who crunched unruly data on U.F.O. reports collected by two volunteer organizations: the Mutual U.F.O. Network, or Mufon, and the National U.F.O. Reporting Center, or Nuforc.
It is the reference “U.F.O. researchers dreamed of having,” Gordon G. Spear, emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at Sonoma State University in California, writes in the foreword.
The book contains no narrative or anecdotal accounts, just 371 pages of charts and graphs that slice and dice the geography and timing of the incidents and the various shapes that witnesses reported: flying circles, spheres, triangles, discs, ovals, cigars.
Many of the sightings turn out to be explainable, the authors say, but a small percentage defy resolution.
The government officially quit the U.F.O. business in 1968, with the finding in the Condon report from the University of Colorado that there was nothing significant to investigate, although some 30 percent of the incidents were unexplained.
Mufon’s 500 volunteer investigators, however, continue to check out many of the sightings reported to the group. Roger Marsh, a Mufon spokesman, said that of the 270 cases his group investigated in Manhattan from 2002 through 2016, 44 eluded explanation and remained “unknown.”
One of the most intriguing occurred on the afternoon of Sept. 17, 2011, when a man on the roof terrace of the New Museum on the Bowery photographed a fast-moving diamond-shaped object with windows and flashing blue and red lights against the TriBeCa skyline.
According to Mufon, it resembled an unknown flying object photographed in Round Rock, Tex., two weeks earlier.
For the U.F.O. enthusiast, the pages of graphs and charts are a treasure trove of hard-to-find detail.
The District of Columbia, with 9,856 people per square mile, had the fewest sightings: 154. (A political snub from deep space?) Wyoming, with 5.8 people per square mile, had more than twice as many: 337.
Fireballs made up nearly 8 percent of the sightings in Indiana (230) and fewer than 5 percent in Colorado (157).
California, the most populous state, led the nation in U.F.O. reports (15,836, more than the next two states, Florida and Texas, combined). Los Angeles County alone had more sightings than 40 states, followed by Maricopa County, Ariz., which includes Phoenix.
The arduous breakdown by the nation’s more than 3,000 counties was notable for revealing clusters of sightings in remote regions, places where U.F.O.s are almost never mentioned. But every county in the United States appears to have seen at least one U.F.O.
FULL STORY