In the last century it was one of the most popular issues on the radio, on television, and in books. Yes, we are talking about UFOs. They caused panic (think on the radio broadcast “The war of the worlds” in 1938), gathered many believers (The X-files in the 90’s) and made a lot of conspiracy theories (the Roswell incident in 1947). Someone believes them and others not. We could not state if they exist or not but one thing is sure, we have a lot of registered cases when people saw something in the sky. The question is that: What did they actually see?
What Is a UFO?
Unidentified flying object that is UFO is an object in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Here we have to pinpoint that UFO is an object not a creature. If we are talking about a creature, which does not originate from the Earth, we call it an alien. Most of the time UFO and alien are mistaken, which is a very big mistake. If you see an unidentified object it does not mean that an alien drives it. It can be for example a new fighter prototype. However, it can also be an extraterrestial spaceship :)
Dated UFOs
Thanks to many enthusiastic people, many apparitions were not just detected but also recorded. These records were collected and summarized in a database. To download the data click here. The people recorded the incidents all over the world but only a few countries are highlighted such as Germany, Great-Britain, Canada, Australia and the United States. The database contains 88,875 recorded cases. Only in the USA were 70,293 UFO sighting according to the spreadsheet. In Canada there was only 3266 phenomenan. The difference is quite big or we can say it is enormous.
Shapes
The shape is one of the most important part of the investigation. Let’s see the facts. 20% of the people reported that the shape was “light”. Did they really see then an object or could it only be a meteorological phenomenon? 10% of the people said that shape of the object was triangle and other 10% stated it was circle. 7% claimed that they saw a fireball. It can also be several things such as a comet, a shooting star or fireworks. Let’s have a look at the graph below. You see the volume of the chance of shape is being light by hours of the day. Most of the time, light as a shape was seen between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.. After dark it is very hard to say what you see and identify the shape as well and you could not state that you are 100% sure that you saw an unidentified object. We see that a lot of people saw a kind of shape that can be illusived.
Duration
The duration is also important if we analyse the sightings. Most of the incidents, 31021 cases (34,9%) held for maximum 50 seconds. But go a bit further. If we see the number of cases between 0 and 250 seconds then 52,674 (59,2%) incidents were recorded. We can say that most of the time people did not have enough time to examine the shape of the object. If we look at the chart then we see some outstanding values such as 300-350, 600-650 and so on. What causes those? The answer is very simple. Many people gave a period like 3-5 minutes and always the bigger number was recorded in the spreadsheet. So if somebody claimed the duration held 1-5 mins then they wrote 5 mins in the table.
It is also worth to have a look at the hours of UFO sightings. There is no surprise, most of the people saw unidentified objects after dark. The number of indicents rapidly grows after 5 p.m. but after midnight it rashly decreases. Why are they coming mainly after dark?
Year by year
Obviously, nowadays there are more devices that we can use to catch the phenomenan. Thanks to the technology, today you can follow nearly everything in real time if you have a mobile phone and internet access. Now let’s see how the number of UFO sightings changed by years. Between 1906 and 1994 there were only 8,586 recorded sightings. Then something happened in 1995. They recorded 1384 cases in that year. It was nearly 3 times more than in the previous year. After that the number of the incidents rapidly increased and in 2012 it reached the highest value, 7873.
Between 1995 and 2014 they registered 79,027 UFO sightings. Only the technological development caused this upswing? Probably yes. As we said, today you can follow nearly everything real-time. After 5 minutes that something happened in Japan the whole world will know about it. If you see something interesting you just pick your smart phone, take a picture or shoot a video and upload it to the web with a click. Of course, in the late 90’s the mobile phone was not widely used and the internet connection was very bad but in these years the television ruled everything and the videocameras were also very popular. (The X-files was launched in 1993, it could also have an effect). More and more people were informed through the media and many of them started to spy the sky consciously.
Where to Go?
UFO sighting were recorded all over the world but if you would like to catch a UFO on lens then you should go to the USA. The numbers show that you have the biggest chance there to see a UFO with your own eyes. We know that you do not want to ramble across the whole country to catch a UFO. What does the data say? Definitely, you have to visit California state after dark. In the USA, 14% of the cases were recorded in that state. What reasons do you think can lie behind it?
