Are you a UFO fan? A group of NASA experts have investigated 800 different cases of unidentified flying objects recorded over the past 27 years, and their results are… well, rather discouraging for those who “want to believe”. The researchers have been able to ascertain that only 2 to 5% of these hundreds of cases are truly unexplained.
According to The Register, this group of experts is composed of 16 people, including scientists, company executives, U.S. federal employees and even an astronaut. A committee that has studied for seven months the reports of UFO sightings of the last decades.
David Spergel, a retired professor of astrophysics at Princeton University, called at a public hearing on Wednesday for the need for better quality data to be collected in order to study and understand this type of phenomenon.
“Right now there are a very limited number of high-quality observations and preservation of UFO data,” he said in his keynote address. “The available data from eyewitness reports are often confusing and cannot provide conclusive evidence to support UFO recognition and analysis.”
The researcher also mentioned existing problems with audiovisual recordings of UFOs: “the background of an object can further complicate the data and render it unusable due to conventional objects that can mimic or completely eclipse the phenomena, such as commercial aircraft, military equipment to weather and ionospheric phenomena such as auroras. This lack of high-quality data makes it impossible to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of UFOs.”
Most recorded UFOs turn out to be military aircraft, weather balloons or even ordinary balloons reflecting sunlight. According to Nadia Drake, a member of the research group and an independent science journalist, only 2 to 5% of the 800 sightings studied turned out to be anomalous.
“Existing current data and eyewitness reports alone are insufficient to provide conclusive evidence on the nature and origin of each UFO event,” Spergel concluded, adding that “better targeted data collection, comprehensive preservation and robust analysis” are needed to “discern sightings from unexplained gaps.”
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