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Larger Minority in US Says Some UFOs Are Alien Spacecraft (gallup.com) 202

Posted by msmash from the i-want-to-believe dept.
Gallup: More Americans are taking UFOs seriously than just two years ago. When asked which of two theories better explains UFO sightings, 41% of adults now believe some UFOs involve alien spacecraft from other planets, up eight points from 33% in 2019. Half of Americans, down from 60% in 2019, remain skeptical, saying all UFO sightings can be explained by human activity or natural phenomena. Another 9% are unwilling to venture a guess. The recent change spans a period when UFOs have received significant coverage in mainstream news publications. This includes a spate of articles in 2019 focused on leaked footage of mysterious flying objects taken by Navy pilots. While the Department of Defense has not suggested these or any UFOs involve alien visitors, the Navy has acknowledged the leaked video is authentic, and in 2020, it commissioned a task force to study "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAP).

The latest Gallup results are based on a telephone poll conducted July 6-21. This was less than a month after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued its preliminary report on UAPs, stating that the various types of incidents examined likely fall into one of five categories: "airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, [U.S. government] or U.S. industry development programs, foreign adversary systems and a catchall 'other' bin." The 2019 survey was conducted Aug. 1-14, several months after the Navy UFO footage was first leaked. From 1973 to 2019, Gallup tracked whether Americans thought UFO sightings involved "something real," as opposed to "just people's imaginations." This wording found between 47% and 57% believing they were real, including 56% in 2019. However, it wasn't clear from the question whether "real" meant people thought UFOs involved alien visitors or earthly objects such as drones, military planes or unusual cloud formations. To address that uncertainty, in a separate 2019 poll, Gallup first asked whether any UFOs have been alien spacecraft, with no questions about UFOs immediately preceding it in the survey. Today's update replicated that methodology, thus providing a reliable trend.
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Larger Minority in US Says Some UFOs Are Alien Spacecraft More

Larger Minority in US Says Some UFOs Are Alien Spacecraft

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  • People to think this. I'm just wondering why. My theory is they're hoping that if they can get people to buy into UFO conspiracy theories maybe that will satisfy their craving for conspiracies and get them to lay off the vaccine conspiracies. I can't think of any other reason why they would do this, but on the other hand it's not a good idea since there have been studies that indicate that if you start believing in one conspiracy theory you're more likely to believe in others.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      So your theory is that a group of people reached an agreement to subvert... conspiracy theorists?!?

      www.fark.com/iamshitmypantscrazy

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Pimpy ( 143938 )

      Well, for starters, they got caught with their pants down when Russia announced their hypersonic weapons systems in public, and allowed complacency to put them a square decade or more behind. "It must be aliens" is much more palatable than admitting massive intelligence failures and that other countries may have out-innovated them while they were sitting there patting themselves on the back for being #1. The American ego is fragile enough that the idea anyone else can be the first to attain technological su

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jzanu ( 668651 )
        The weak point in the idea of Russian weapons development producing something revolutionary and threatening is that the "announced/announcement" part has never been connected to reality.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by spun ( 1352 )

        Or it is in fact the US that has super advanced weapons, and they are simply pointing that fact out to our enemies. "Yeah, see this shit? Definitely UFOs. That's why our military is announcing to the world we don't know what it could be. Our military loves looking dumb!"

        What the military is doing is pointing out that our enemies don't know how this stuff works, while giving themselves plausible deniability. "This stuff" is simply directed energy weapons. The "UFOs" are hot spots in the atmosphere created by

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rossdee ( 243626 )

        "allowed complacency to put them a square decade or more behind."

        I know the USA has some weird units, but WTF is "a square decade" ?

    • The main thing is likely that isolation does some pretty bad stuff to people. For instance, rural life may or may not imply things about education, but as a matter of definition it means a lot of people in such places are stewing in their own paranoia.

      • But I know some people who live in rural communities and they're still communities. In fact they're often less isolated and living in a city because they know their neighbors better and are more comfortable with them. The main problem with rural communities at least according to the studies, is that their small tight-knit communities that lack any sort of diversity and so they become echo Chambers (I know diversity is a bad word, but facts are facts if you're around a lot of different people you learn to be

      • " it means a lot of people in such places are stewing in their own paranoia."

        Cabin fever is a bitch.

      • How do we know many of the reported "ghost" sightings wasn't the result a space/time distortion that science cannot explain.

        One story that stood out for me was a house that had it's floor raised a couple feet. One night, the homeowner reported seeing a ghost walking on that floor, but walking on the same level that the old floor used to be and thus it appeared to be sunken in the new floor.

        Yes people can make up anything, and make it sound convincing, but this one story made me go "Hmmm".

      • Re:When I lived alone, is there a ghost in my hous (Score:4, Informative)

        by Oligonicella ( 659917 ) on Saturday August 21, 2021 @10:44AM (#61714713)
        You don't know people living in the boons, do you? We're not isolated. Everyone has a phone and a car. We read news (good and bad) and we get together frequently. People locked up in their apartments are far more isolated.
    • Youre halfway there. In the 90s it seems like all the major leagues went on strike at the same time. There were literally large chunks of time where sports wasnt playing. People started paying attention to politics. There was an impeachment and everything. I doubt that would have happened if baseball and monday night football was still airing. When all those people were slaughtered in Rawanda, people in the USA were wondering 'Will Nancy be able to skate in the Olympics?apos; and 'Did OJ do it?

    • It is obvious that when the TV talking heads start yammering about UFOs some people will start linking the thought to all those alien invasion movies they've watched. Not sure how that works for some people, but it does. The military wing of The Blob really wants you to worry about things, you know, terrorists, commies, alien invaders, etc. This new UFO push is just an attempt to boost funding for the latest military boondoggle; "Space Force!". When you have an extremely bloated, unaccountable military budg

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by noodler ( 724788 )

      My theory is they're hoping that if they can get people to buy into UFO conspiracy theories maybe that will satisfy their craving for conspiracies and get them to lay off the vaccine conspiracies.

      You're wrong. The idea is that if you can create a frenzy where people believe in things that are completely unproven then you can make them believe other untrue things. It puts a big fat question mark on reality. These people will turn against rationality and start living in a bubble that has little connection to truth and that's exactly where they want the gullible peons to live. Makes politics easier and so on.
      Lemme see what's on the agenda. Uuh, the great success story that is the US presence in Afghani

  • Plenty of UFO's through history. [biblegateway.com]

  • Some other interesting alleged stats (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Friday August 20, 2021 @04:55PM (#61712733)

    27 percent of Americans don’t accept heliocentrism.

    48 percent don’t accept common ancestry of humans and non-human animals.

    61 percent don’t accept the big bang.

    Source:

    https://blogs.scientificameric... [scientificamerican.com]

    • Where does religion play into all of this?

      • Re:Some other interesting alleged stats (Score:5, Insightful)

        by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Friday August 20, 2021 @05:11PM (#61712819) Homepage Journal

        It is possible for a person to be religious but still apply logic and scientific method and accept generally held facts as true.

        Some people are ignorant and would rather defend their ignorance under a cloak of religion than put in the effort to stop being ignorant. And this suits their masters just fine.

        • My math analytics teacher was one of the smartest fucking humans I ever met. Just... brilliant.
          Also ultra-religious (Christian).

          But never once did it seem to get in the way of his scientific discussions. I don't know how he reconciled it, but he did.

      • "Where does religion play into all of this?"

        It's another sub-section from 'people believe stupid shit'.

    • Re:Some other interesting alleged stats (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday August 20, 2021 @05:46PM (#61712965) Homepage Journal

      That was my thought too -- the "man in the street" probably has a lot of opinions that differ from the experts. But it got me thinking: who *in this case* would qualify as an expert? Certainly not UFOlogists who manage to be at the same time both shockingly credulous and shockingly unimaginative. They always seem to come to the conclusion that the *only* explanation for some thing has to be aliens.

      Relevant expertise can be found in some surprising places. I've seen CGI artists discuss the famous Navy UAP videos, which they weren't particularly impressed by. That's because they spend a lot of time thinking about how to digitally create how various things would look like through a camera lens. It's not that they think the videos were faked, it's that they understand the peculiarities of cameras better than most people.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        Well a physicist would be able to tell you that as we understand it timely intergalactic travel is impossible so either UFOs aren't aliens or they are aliens and are so advanced that they're basically magic to us. The later then begs the question, "why on earth is this massively advanced race so sloppy as to be spotted over and over again?" and I don't think there's a reasonable answer to that.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tragedy ( 27079 )

          Rather than physicists, better people to ask are experts in digital imaging, optics (ok, basically a kind of physicist), etc. Who can give conclusive information on how the video artifact being interpreted as a "UFO" is actually being generated.

          • They do. And there are very plausible explanations generated.
            They are, however, not definitive. And they can't possibly be.
            That's why the visual objects remain unidentified.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by skam240 ( 789197 )

            I would suggest that knowing how obscenely bad the odds are of it being aliens is absolutely integral to interpreting these things. Otherwise people will be willing to find "aliens" under all sorts of stupid rocks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Yeah, sure. If I received an e-mail poll from YouGov [wikipedia.org], I'd probably screw with them a bit.

      Flat Earth? Sure. People and dinosaurs coexisted? Yep. Do I own any guns and where do I store them? F*ck off, wankers.

    • 78% of statistics are made up, including this one.

  • If your explanation is "aliens" ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Friday August 20, 2021 @04:56PM (#61712735) Journal

    You have NO CONCEPT of the size of the universe.

    • Or you think that problem falling into a category alongside the four noble elements, impossible to exceed sound barrier or the indivisible atom is at least as likely as any of the other blatant trashing of the laws of established physics required to explain the confirmed phenomenon. Also, since the release of those videos people who aren't nutjobs are now actually looking at the mountain of ongoing evidence for these things instead of repeating the baseless mantra that all evidence can be disregarded becaus

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        Try the little yellow pills next time. The big pink ones aren't working for you.

  • Looks like science may, on a larger time scale, turn out to be a short lived phenomenon in the evolution, it just does not boost the procreation of the species quite as effectively as weird beliefs do.
    • You've been watching Donald Hoffman videos again, haven't you? He says evolution doesn't preference the truth.

    • Looks like science may, on a larger time scale, turn out to be a short lived phenomenon in the evolution, it just does not boost the procreation of the species quite as effectively as weird beliefs do.

      Well, let's face it. Conspiracy theories are a lot easier to understand & a lot more entertaining!

      • And I have an easier time imagining two nutball conspiracy theorists working themselves into some weird ass pornographic furor, while 2 scientists discussing the drake equation... just not sexy.

        At the end of the day, evolution favors one thing: Who makes the most babies. And as long as the smart people are making sure the stupid peoples kids aren't dying off? The path is clear.

  • UFO's are Space Billionaires (Score:3)

    by BeerFartMoron ( 624900 ) on Friday August 20, 2021 @05:02PM (#61712765)
    UFO's are just billionaires from other systems flexing on each other.

    • Re:UFO's are Space Billionaires (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NotTheSame ( 6161704 ) on Friday August 20, 2021 @05:11PM (#61712815)

      Ford Prefect: Teasers are rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise aroung the galaxy looking for planets that no one's made contact with and buzz them.

      Arthur Dent: Buzz them?

      Ford Prefect: Yeah. They find some isolated spot, land by some unsuspecting soul that no one's ever going to believe and strut up and down in front of them, making beep-beep noises.

      Ford Prefect: Rather childish really.

    • "UFO's are just billionaires from other systems flexing on each other."

      Exactly, and they flew for thousands of years just to put a probe up some redneck's ass.

  • Aliens came here long ago. They left an obelisk in Africa somewhere and chimps touched it and threw a bone into the air that became a space wheel in orbit.

  • Widespread misunderstanding about what "UFO" means (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NotTheSame ( 6161704 ) on Friday August 20, 2021 @05:05PM (#61712781)

    A lot of people think that "UFO" means "alien spacecraft". The media do very little to correct this misunderstanding.

    "US Navy pilot sees UFO, video attached" is an exciting headline that will generate lots of clicks. "US Navy pilot sees visual phenomenon that cannot immediately be explained", not so many clicks.

    If the phone pollsters explained exactly what "UFO" meant before starting their survey, the 40% of UFO believers would probably be halved.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BeerFartMoron ( 624900 )

      If the phone pollsters explained exactly what "UFO" meant before starting their survey, the 40% of UFO believers would probably be halved.

      80 percent of Republicans strongly disapprove of Obamacare. Only about 60 percent strongly disapprove of the Affordable Care Act.

      So it goes.

    • Didnt the rename it from UFO UAP?

    • Assuming you're discussing the Navy video that Tom DeLonge's organization publicized a few years back, "UFO" would be a more accurate descriptor than "visual phenomenon." I'm not versed in advanced naval radar systems, but presumably they wouldn't pick up a strictly visual phenomenon. That it also appeared to multiple observers, both cameras and human eyes, from wildly different angles (moving jets and from the ocean's surface on the Navy vessel), also shoots down some of the attempts I've seen to explain i

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by noodler ( 724788 )

        I think what is meant by 'visual phenomenon' is really 'optical phenomenon'. The optical component being the FLIR camera on the jet fighters.

  • Sorry, The Space Aliens Are Not Coming (Score:5, Informative)

    by rudy_wayne ( 414635 ) on Friday August 20, 2021 @05:12PM (#61712821)
    And yet no one ever asks the most obvious question -- after you see one of these UFOs, where did it go? We already know that there is no life anywhere in our solar system, other than earth. And once you get outside of our solar system, you're dealing with enormous distances.

    So aliens are traveling hundreds/thousands of light years just so they can fly over a trailer park in Arkansas and then magically disappear without a trace? I don't think so.

    Stephen Hawking once said that if aliens visit us they will most likely not be friendly. Whether or not he is correct is irrelevant because the aliens aren't coming. Ever.
    • He specifically said history has shown that when one advanced civilization comes into contact with a more primitive one, it doesnt fair well for the primitive civilization. Theres also the crackpot scientology story that we are a galactic penal colony. Oh and Orson Welles' theory that out microbes will prevent them from sticking around.

      • Virus populations and cockroaches might disagree.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          They might but since the above specifically stated they were talking about civilizations meeting and not life forms they'd be wrong to do so.

          Then again they probably wouldnt even then because they aren't sentient.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by noodler ( 724788 )

        Wells is wrong in the sense that microbes need earth-like organisms to do anything with. They would suck at making aliens sick unless the aliens were very close to earth life.

    • > because the aliens aren't coming. Ever.

      False. They have already been here. One of the best documentaries with many eyewitnesses is Hulu's The UFO Phenomenon [hulu.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        I won't bother with the link. However, if it is of the sort "ancient aliens", then it is of the sort "Gee, that's odd, I cannot believe what science says about it, so it must be aliens." Someone cue the Greek guy with the electric hair.

      • Oh shit, are they casting for idiocracy 2?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by noodler ( 724788 )

          Oh no. No no no no no.
          Idiocracy 2 has gone live years ago. It's the greatest reality show in this sector of the milky way.

    • So aliens are traveling hundreds/thousands of light years just so they can fly over a trailer park in Arkansas and then magically disappear without a trace? I don't think so.

      No. They are coming here to make an assessment of whether there is intelligent life, took a look at Arkansas and decided not to bother. It's like the other day I went to the pub only to find out their beer ran out, I too left without a trace.

  • Believe in sasquatch but are sasquatch's or UFO's real? the answer is no.

  • We're getting dumber (Score:3)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Friday August 20, 2021 @05:24PM (#61712883) Journal
    This proves to me that Americans, as a society, are getting dumber. Everyone now has a camera at all times. Tsunami's we once poorly documented, like UFOs. However, since the invention of the camera-phone, they are now highly documented. [wired.com]

    UFO sightings haven't become better documented since the invention of the camera-phone. UFOs are primarily documented by the military. Therefore, they are most likely military activity.

    • "UFO sightings haven't become better documented since the invention of the camera-phone. UFOs are primarily documented by the military. Therefore, they are most likely military activity."

      That's just because most iPhone users don't have supersonic fighter planes.

  • This is symptomatic of a larger dysfunctional trend, the US has been heading down the road of "What you believe is just as important as what you can prove scientifically". I agree that people should be able to hold any view that they'd like to hold however this doesn't mean that the viewpoint shouldn't be challenged with strong arguments or humor. If someone want to believe in UFO, that the creator of the universe somehow existed before the universe or that vaccines actually are full of little mind control

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

      This is symptomatic of a larger dysfunctional trend, the US has been heading down the road of "What you believe is just as important as what you can prove scientifically". I agree that people should be able to hold any view that they'd like to hold however this doesn't mean that the viewpoint shouldn't be challenged with strong arguments or humor. If someone want to believe in UFO, that the creator of the universe somehow existed before the universe or that vaccines actually are full of little mind control computers and that you can feel the difference between different type of virus, fine. However ridicule them.

      The world is full of people who belittle what they can neither understand nor comprehend.

    • If someone want to believe ... that the creator of the universe somehow existed before the universe

      As opposed to what? A creator not existing before the thing they created existed?

      Might need to think that one through a little more.

  • So we have military footage of UFOs...but they're a minority of air traffic.

    There are something like 2,500 commercial airplanes in the air any given hour.

    Many packed with people. With phones.

    If UFOs are so commonplace, why aren't there videos from commercial planes? You'd think odds are that a few would also fly by these UFOs.

    • Not to mention that if the military really believed that the UFO:s where real then they would not just leak a video or two, they would have a Leon: The Professional "EVERYONE" moment and assemble every single ship, airplane and whatever to catch those fuckers.

      • Most of them seem to have fuzzy boundaries such that regular folks just capture yet another blob, and your friends roll their eyes and make thumb jokes. I suspect they are some kind of plasma or plasma-like phenomenon (whether ET-controlled or natural).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tragedy ( 27079 )

      I agree with this, but I do have to comment. I remember when I was a kid how great it was to have the window seat and look at the window for hourse. I still love to be in a window seat when I fly. However, it seems like a huge number of my fellow passengers these days (well, not _these_ specific days since I have not flown since the start of the pandemic), including the kids, are not really interested in looking out of the windows. I'm not sure if that's just because I'm unusual and always have been, or if

  • We've talked, evidently we're too primitive, stupid and violent. They have no interest in us until we become intelligent.

  • Look at the evidence and there really is no other explanation. Louis Elizandoâ(TM)s TV Show explores quite a bit of this
    • Would also like to add that the US is NOT the only country with UFO sightings. Several others have departments dedicated to this. They also have confirmed reports with witnesses and evidence for UFO activity.
      • You mean e.g the Chilean UFO that their military experts couldn't make sense of but that the Internet solved within a few minutes after they released the footage and it turned out to be just a regular air-plane?
    • There is no evidence, even one of the videos released by the navy that UFO enthusiasts are salivating over that clearly just shows the gimble effect is even named "gimble.mp4" by the navy. Someone at the navy is right now laughing there asses of reading YouTube comments.

    • There is another explanation, people make up fanciful reasons for odd sights... that have ordinary boring explanations when examined.

      No space aliens observed ever, that's the truth. Claimants looking like idiots when their "evidence" is examined and debunked, that's also truth.

  • I am convinced that if there was actually an alien intelligent civilization that was close enough to earth to get to us that they would occasionally be spotted in our atmosphere, I believe that we would have publicly detected them by now. I think that seeing them as spacecraft is more likely to be a consequence of pareidolia on something that we don't see often enough to otherwise easily classify than it is an indication that they are what such people might believe they are seeing.

  • Christianity: The belief that some cosmic Jewish Zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree. Makes perfect sense.

  • Even among intelligent people, what percentage _want_ to believe warp drive is PRACTICALLY (not theoretically) possible? And if you discount some of the silly science in Outer Limits and Twilight Zone episodes virtually everyone alive has "seen" aliens on TV and I have to believe fantasy does bleed into people's perceptions of reality. And is it really so unreasonable for people with little science background to see how much intelligent people love space opera and conclude from it that there must be somethi

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    Bob Lazar is a physicist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and also on reverse engineering extraterrestrial technology at a site called S-4 near the Area 51 Groom Lake operating location. Jeremy Corbell is a contemporary artist and documentary filmmaker. Watch the documentary "Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers" now streaming on Netflix.

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