15 Facts About UFO

The 20th century saw studies and investigations into UFO reports conducted by governments, as well as by organisations and individuals.

Various UFO claimants said that they had interacted with the aliens driving the spacecraft and a few said they had visited the crafts themselves.

In 1961, the first alien abduction account was sensationalized when Barney and Betty Hill went under hypnosis after seeing a UFO and reported recovered memories of their experience that became ever more elaborate as the years went by.

Kloor writes that by the late 1990s, "other big UFO subthemes had been prominently introduced into pop culture, such as the abduction phenomenon and government conspiracy narrative, via best-selling books and, of course, The X-Files".

Term "UFO" was coined in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports.

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Term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use.

UFO wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance.

Eight file collections on UFO sightings, dating from 1978 to 1987, were first released on May 14, 2008, to The National Archives by the Ministry of Defence.

The report confirmed earlier findings that the main causes of UFO sightings are misidentification of man-made and natural objects.

The MoD said there was no value in continuing to receive and investigate sightings in a release, stating that "in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom.

Critics argue that all UFO evidence is anecdotal and can be explained as prosaic natural phenomena.

Studies have established that the majority of UFO observations are misidentified conventional objects or natural phenomena—most commonly aircraft, balloons including sky lanterns, satellites, and astronomical objects such as meteors, bright stars and planets.

Novella says that instead of accepting the null hypothesis, UFO enthusiasts tend to engage in special pleading by offering outlandish, untested explanations for the validity of the ETH, which violate Occam's razor.

The scientific community has generally deemed that UFO sightings are not worthy of serious investigation except as a cultural artifact.

In March 2021, news media announced a comprehensive report is to be compiled of UFO events accumulated by the United States over the years.