How Can I See A UFO?
A tongue-in-cheek approach to predicting sightings
The National UFO Reporting Center has recorded an average of 1,329 UFO sightings per year over the last 50 years. In the last 10 years, that number has risen to an average of 4,914 sightings, with a high of 7,022 reported sightings as recently as 2014. That gives us a daily average of 13 unique sightings since 2010, vs a daily average of just 3 unique sightings overall.
It is my belief that this increase in reported sightings has more to do with the greater availability of internet access, in combination with NUFORC being featured in an ABC documentary titled UFOs: Seeing Is Believing. This documentary drove a large amount of traffic to the NUFORC site and greatly increased their visibility. This trend of growth in reported sightings, then, represents just that; an increase in reported sightings, rather than the warning signs of imminent alien invasion.
Taking the most recent population estimates from the US Census Bureau, there are roughly 254,000,000 adults in the US right now. A 2017 survey of American belief in UFOs, commissioned by 20th Century Fox, indicates that nearly 17% of American adults believe they have seen a UFO; ~43,000,000 people. Dividing this by our yearly average of reported sightings (4,914) tells us that only 1 in nearly 8,800 people having experiences actually report them.
We’ve now established that, while few people report them, there must be a large number of sightings happening. Enough that, given the right place at the right time, maybe you could have one too!
If I wanted to experience a sighting myself, what are my next steps?
From the data collected by NUFORC, we can immediately discern a couple of valuable things.
Unsurprisingly, sightings are much more common at night, increasing sharply at sunset, and slowly declining throughout the evening until a sudden lull at sunrise.
And surprisingly, sightings seem to increase significantly in the summer months despite the shorter nights.
But where do I need to be to have a sighting?
A quick K-Means clustering of the sightings tells us the Northeast (~25% of all sightings) is the place to be! So if I’m planning an excursion to experience some Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, I should shoot for a nice, warm evening in July, maybe by the banks of the Hudson River. But why?
Is there an aspect of the phenomenon that responds to the higher temperatures, the longer days? (Maybe.)
Are we just outside more in the summer? (Probably.)
Are there other celestial events happening during the peak months that are easy to misidentify? (Definitely — Both the Perseid and Delta Aquarid Meteor Showers run from mid-July to mid-August).
WHAT COULD IT BE?!
As it turns out, sightings occur ~7 times as frequently on the 4th of July as on any other date of that month. There’s a corresponding (though much smaller) uptick for the 1st of January— midnight fireworks capping off New Year’s Eve. Of the ~68,000 sightings in the data I worked with, July makes up for 12.5% of all reported sightings, with the 4th of July alone accounting for a staggering 2% of that total. On top of this, a geo heatmap of the sightings looks suspiciously like a population map.
I think the implications are clear.
UFOs love fireworks.
Unfortunately, UFOs also happen to look like fireworks. Frequently. The most commonly reported appearances on July 4th are described as “lights” (21%) and “fireballs” (17%).
How can I know I’ve seen a UFO and not fireworks?
A quick and highly questionable application of Bayes’ Theorem, assuming our 17% rate of prior sightings, and a false positive rate of 38% (the percentage of July 4th sightings in the Northeast most likely to have been fireworks), returns a probability of having a sighting at 96.48% after 10 long years of July 4th stakeouts. Perhaps more encouraging, after a single July 4th spent in watchful solitude, we’re already looking at a 25% chance of having a sighting.
The primary takeaways here seem to be that witnesses are unreliable, and that the vast majority of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena are, in fact, Misidentified Aerial Phenomena.
Or, maybe, UFOs love fireworks.
But, if you want to have your own personal Close Encounter, the most prudent course of action is to head to the Northeast for the 4th of July this year, look up, and believe.
The data used above has been made available by Tim Renner, whose work is an inspiration. I excluded all incomplete reports, i.e. reports not containing a sighting, reports not specifying a date or location, etc. My notebook is available here.
If you’d like more information on the UFO phenomenon, both NUFORC and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) have a number of resources available. The writings of Jacques Vallée have served as a personal inspiration. If you believe you’ve had an encounter and would like to report it, NUFORC’s submission form is here.
