An unidentified flying object (UFO), or unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP), is any perceived airborne, submerged or transmedium phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. Upon investigation, most UAPs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained.
UFO conspiracy theories are a subset of conspiracy theories which argue that various governments and politicians globally, in particular the United States government, are suppressing evidence that unidentified flying objects are controlled by a non-human intelligence or built using alien technology. Such conspiracy theories usually argue that Earth governments are in communication or cooperation with extraterrestrial visitors despite public disclaimers, and further that some of these theories claim that the governments are explicitly allowing alien abduction.
The Roswell incident is a collection of events and myths surrounding the 1947 crash of a United States Army Air Forces balloon near Roswell, New Mexico. Operated from the nearby Alamogordo Army Air Field and part of the top secret Project Mogul, the balloon was intended to detect Soviet nuclear tests. After metallic and rubber debris was recovered by Roswell Army Air Field personnel, the United States Army announced their possession of a "flying disc". This announcement made international headlines but was retracted within a day. Obscuring the true purpose and source of the crashed balloon, the Army subsequently stated that it was a conventional weather balloon.
Black triangles are UFOs reported as having a triangular shape and dark color, typically observed at night, described as large, silent, hovering, moving slowly, and displaying pulsating, colored lights which they can turn off.
The Cash–Landrum Incident was an unidentified flying object sighting in the United States in 1980, which witnesses claimed was responsible for causing health and property damage. Uncharacteristically for such UFO reports, this resulted in civil court proceedings, though the case ended in a dismissal.
The Phoenix Lights were a series of widely sighted unidentified flying objects observed in the skies over the southwestern U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada on March 13, 1997.
Bruce S. Maccabee was an American optical physicist employed by the U.S. Navy, and a ufologist.
The Mariana UFO incident occurred in August 1950 in Great Falls, Montana. The film footage of the sighting, filmed by local baseball coach Nick Mariana, is believed to be among the first ever taken of what came to be called an unidentified flying object. The U.S. Air Force, after a short investigation, concluded that what had actually been sighted were the reflections of two F-94 jet fighters, a claim that would later be retracted.
The Kaikoura lights is a name given by the New Zealand media to a series of UFO sightings that occurred in December 1978, over the skies above the Kaikōura mountain ranges in the northeast of New Zealand's South Island. The first sightings were made on 21 December when the crew of a Safe Air Ltd cargo aircraft began observing a series of strange lights around their Armstrong Whitworth AW.660 Argosy aircraft, which tracked along with their aircraft for several minutes before disappearing and then reappearing elsewhere. The UFO was very large and had five white flashing lights that were visible on the craft. Some people say that they could see some little disks drop from the UFO and then disappear. The pilots described some of the lights to be the size of a house and others small but flashing brilliantly. These objects appeared on the air traffic controller radar in Wellington and also on the aircraft's on-board radar.
The Westall UFO was a reported UFO sighting in Australia that occurred on 6 April 1966 in Melbourne, Victoria. The object was observed by multiple individuals, including students at Westall High School. Specific details vary between accounts, which increases the difficulty of identification. The sighting has been commemorated with documentaries, reunions, and a local UFO playground.
This is a list of notable alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in the United Kingdom. Many more sightings have become known since the gradual release, between 2008 and 2013, of the Ministry of Defence's UFO sighting reports by the National Archives. In recent years, there have been many sightings of groups of slowly moving lights in the night sky, which can be easily explained as Chinese lanterns. Undertaken between 1997 and 2000, Project Condign concluded that all the investigated sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena in the UK could be attributed to misidentified but explicable objects, or poorly understood natural phenomena.
From July 12 to 29, 1952, a series of unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings were reported in Washington, D.C., and later became known as the Washington flap, the Washington National Airport Sightings, or the Invasion of Washington. The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 19–20 and July 26–27. UFO historian Curtis Peebles called the incident "the climax of the 1952 (UFO) flap"—"Never before or after did Project Blue Book and the Air Force undergo such a tidal wave of (UFO) reports."
The Gorman dogfight was a widely publicized UFO incident which took place on October 1, 1948, in the skies over Fargo, North Dakota, United States. United States Air Force (USAF) Captain Edward J. Ruppelt wrote in his bestselling and influential The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects that the "dogfight" was one of three "classic" UFO incidents in 1948 that "proved to [Air Force] intelligence specialists that UFOs were real," along with the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter and the Mantell UFO incident. In 1949, the official explanation made by the USAF was that the Gorman dogfight had been caused by a lighted weather balloon.
The 2009 Morristown UFO hoax was a series of aerial events involving mysterious floating red lights in the sky, that first occurred near Morristown, New Jersey, on Monday, January 5, 2009, between 8:15 pm and 9:00 pm. The red lights were later observed on four other nights: January 26, January 29, February 7, and February 17, 2009. The events were later revealed to be a hoax, perpetrated by Joe Rudy and Chris Russo. Rudy and Russo have described the hoax as a social experiment, with the ambition of exposing "ufology" as a pseudoscience and raising consciousness around unreliability of eyewitness claims.
UFO is a 1956 American semi-documentary about the development of the UFO phenomenon in the United States. Clips from the documentary have often been used in other UFO documentaries and television episodes related to UFOs.
The UFO Incident is a 1975 American made-for-television biographical film starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons based on the alleged 1961 alien abduction of Barney and Betty Hill.
Jetpack man, also described as guy in a jetpack or Iron Man, is an unknown person or object that has been observed flying what appears to be an unauthorized jetpack around the Los Angeles area at least five times from 2020 to 2022. Multiple airplane pilots have reported seeing the jetpack man at altitudes around 5,000 feet (1,500 m).
On 16 September 1994, there was a UFO sighting outside Ruwa, Zimbabwe. Sixty-two pupils at the Ariel School aged between six and twelve said that they saw one or more silver craft descend from the sky and land on a field near their school. Some of the children claimed that one or more creatures dressed all in black then approached and telepathically communicated to them a message with an environmental theme, frightening them and causing them to cry.
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects is a 1956 book by then-retired Air Force UFO investigator Edward J. Ruppelt, detailing his experience running Project Bluebook. The book was noted for its suggestion that a few UFO sightings might be linked to spikes of atomic radiation. Contemporary media summarized four topics discussed in the book:
