Are UFOs Real? Ask me please!
Are UFOs Real?
Recently, a National Geographic Society survey showed that 36% of Americans (about 80 million people) believe that UFOs are real, another 10% feel they have witnessed these objects. 17% did not believe strongly, and the others were not sure or had no opinion on the matter.
If you ask me this question personally, then my answer is yes. Wait a second, before answering, let me clarify. For those who know the meaning of the acronym, they realize that it culminates in an unidentified flying object. Anything in the air that an observer cannot easily identify, such as an airplane, an airship, or anything that flies, is a UFO. That’s the part that intrigues me. During the eighties, I remember hearing about strange triangular objects seen flying over northern and southern California from time to time, one of these objects hitting a field of grass near Sacramento, I remember. These objects never appeared on civil and military aviation radars.
Around 1986, Testor Corporation released the rumor-based F19 scale model of a top-secret stealth aircraft. I remember the first time I saw this model was in one of the spring issues of Fine Scale Modeler. A few years later, the USAF released information about a new fighter / bomber that had been in operation for a while, flying from an Air Force base in Nevada since 1983. The F117 was actually used in Panama and later in the first Gulf War.
There were other reports of a batwing ship, which turned out to be the super-secret B-2 Stealth Bomber before it was unveiled publicly in 1988. In both cases that I just exemplified, they were legitimate UFOs. Before the actual origins and designations were revealed to the public, outside of the top secret circle we could not identify them.
The experiments and top secret would be unknown to a civilian terrestrial observer, especially if such ships were of radical design like these two examples, and would seem understandably strange.
The unknown object in the sky does not have to be military to be misidentified. In mid-March 2012, I was in the backyard, staring at the stars and waiting for the International Space Station flyover, when I saw two luminous orange balloons floating in the sky moving north. I had my video camera with me and captured the objects as they floated over the neighborhood. Later, I found out that the realistic explanation for these glowing orbs was Chinese lanterns.
UFOs remain unknown until a rational explanation can be found to identify them. Going from seeing a UFO to the next conclusion that it is an alien spaceship is another matter, and that is what the proof needs.