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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Extraterrestrial UFO hypothesis | 2/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_UFO_hypothesis | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:19:39.670231+00:00 | kb-cron |
==== The 1947 flying saucer wave in America ==== On June 24, 1947, at about 3:00 p.m. local time, pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine unidentified aircraft flying near Mount Rainier. When no aircraft emerged that seemed to account for what he had seen, Arnold quickly considered the possibility of the objects being extraterrestrial. On July 7, 1947, two stories came out where Arnold was raising the topic of possible extraterrestrial origins, both as his opinion and those who had written to him. In an Associated Press story, Arnold said he had received quantities of fan mail eager to help solve the mystery. Some of them "suggested the discs were visitations from another planet." When the 1947 flying saucer wave hit the United States, there was much speculation in the newspapers about what they might be in news stories, columns, editorials, and letters to the editor. For example, on July 10, U.S. Senator Glen Taylor of Idaho commented, "I almost wish the flying saucers would turn out to be space ships from another planet," because the possibility of hostility "would unify the people of the earth as nothing else could." On July 8, R. DeWitt Miller was quoted by UP saying that the saucers had been seen since the early nineteenth century. If the present discs weren't secret Army weapons, he suggested they could be vehicles from Mars, or other planets, or maybe even "things out of other dimensions of time and space." Other articles brought up the work of Charles Fort, who earlier in the twentieth century had documented numerous reports of unidentified flying objects that had been written up in newspapers and scientific journals. Even if people thought the saucers were real, most were generally unwilling to leap to the conclusion that they were extraterrestrial in origin. Various popular theories began to quickly proliferate in press articles and interviews, such as secret military projects, Russian spy devices, hoaxes, optical illusions, and mass hysteria. According to journalist Edward R. Murrow, the ETH as a serious explanation for "flying saucers" did not earn widespread attention until about 18 months after Arnold's sighting. These attitudes seem to be reflected in the results of the first U.S. poll of public UFO perceptions released by Gallup on August 14, 1947. The term "flying saucer" was familiar to 90% of the respondents. As to what people thought explained them, the poll further showed, that most people either held no opinion or refused to answer the question (33%), or generally believed that there was a mundane explanation. 29% thought they were optical illusions, mirages, or imagination; 15% a U.S. secret weapon; 10% a hoax; 3% a "weather forecasting device"; 1% of Soviet origin, and 9% had "other explanations", including fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, secret commercial aircraft, or phenomena related to atomic testing.
==== Evolution of public opinion ==== The early 1950s also saw a number of movies depicting flying saucers and aliens, including The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), and Forbidden Planet (1956). A poll published in Popular Science magazine in August 1951 reported that of the respondents who self-reported as UFO witnesses, 52% believed that they had seen a man-made aircraft, while only 4% believed that they had seen an alien craft; an additional 28% were uncertain, with more than half of these stating they believed they were either man-made aircraft, or "visitors from afar." In 1957, a poll conducted by the St. Louis Globe Democrat reported that 25% of respondents believed or were willing to believe that flying saucers may be objects from outer space, while 53% responded that they were not and 22% reported that they were uncertain. Many of the respondents who answered in the negative accepted the existence of flying saucers but believed they originated on Earth.
==== Religion ====
Hunt describes the Aetherius Society founded by George King in 1955 as "probably the first and certainly the most enduring UFO cult".
=== 21st century === A Roper poll in 2002 reported that 56% of respondents thought UFOs were real, with 48% believing that UFOs had visited Earth.
==== NASA ==== In June 2021, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that he had directed NASA scientists to investigate Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. During an interview at the University of Virginia, Bill Nelson explored the possibility that UAP could represent extraterrestrial technology.
NASA scientist Ravi Kopparapu advocates studying UAP. We need to frame the current UAP/UFO question with the same level of active inquiry, one involving experts from academia in disciplines including astronomy, meteorology and physics, as well as industry and government professionals with knowledge of military aircraft, remote sensing from the ground and satellite observations. Participants would need to be agnostic toward any specific explanations with a primary goal of collecting enough data — including visual, infrared, radar and other possible observations — to eventually allow us to deduce the identity of such UAP. Following this agnostic approach, and relying upon sound scientific and peer-reviewed methods, would go a long way toward lifting the taboo in mainstream science. In August 2021, at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Aviation, Kopparapu presented a paper from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 134th Meeting General Symposium that supported ETH. Kopparapu stated he and his colleagues found the paper "perfectly credible".
=== Private or government studies === Other private or government studies, some secret, have concluded in favor of the ET hypothesis, or have had members who disagreed in contravention with official conclusions reached by the committees and agencies to which they belonged. The following are examples of sources that have focused specifically on the topic: