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Since 1947, scientific and popular debate about the existence of UFOs
has been unremitting. Read some of the case studies to learn more about "close encounters"
over the years, and for an in-depth case study of a 1969 sighting,
adapted from "UFOs Explained" by Phil Klass. |
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Since June 24, 1947, the day American pilot Kenneth Arnold reported
seeing nine unidentified flying objects in the sky, UFO sightings have
become a staple of science fiction plots, government cover-up theories,
scientific inquiry, and popular culture. Eight days after Arnold's
sighting, 'flying saucers' captured national attention with the alleged
crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft in Roswell, New Mexico, a town
that has since built a tourism industry on its claim to fame as a UFO
hotspot.
The Roswell incident prompted U.S. government probes, treasure hunters
specializing in crash debris, and nearly 30 years later reports that
alien corpses had been recovered at the scene of the 1947 crash. A 1994
Air Force report claimed that the original spaceship debris was, in
fact, the unrecovered remnants of high altitude scientific balloon
launched June 4, 1947 in Alamagordo as part of a government research
project code named MOGUL. And the "alien bodies" observed in the
desert? The Air Force report establishes that these were probably
anthropomorphic test dummies carried in the high altitude balloons.
Still, belief in the crash remained so intense that in 1997, the Air
Force issued an additional report titled "The Roswell Report: Case
Closed." |
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