Do Aliens Exist?

First, blinding lights. Then a massive disc-shaped object dozens of feet long comes into view. It floats in the sky without a sound before vanishing. 

That’s how people in Western Massachusetts describe what they saw on September 1, 1969. Many residents of Great Barrington and the surrounding towns say they witnessed an unidentified flying object (UFO) in the night sky. The accounts of those who glimpsed the strange sight are strikingly similar.

“I get goosebumps thinking about it,” says Melanie Kirchdorfer, who was 12 at the time. She and her family were eating ice cream in their car when the object appeared before them. “My sister and I were shaking.”

First, blinding lights. Then a massive disc-shaped object comes into view. It is dozens of feet long. It floats in the sky without a sound. Then it vanishes.

That is how people in Western Massachusetts describe what they saw on September 1, 1969. Many residents of Great Barrington and the surrounding towns say they witnessed an unidentified flying object (UFO) in the night sky. The stories told by those who saw the strange sight are strikingly similar.

“I get goosebumps thinking about it,” says Melanie Kirchdorfer. She was 12 at the time. She and her family were eating ice cream in their car when the object appeared before them. “My sister and I were shaking.”

Calls about the UFO flooded into the local radio station that night. But few people wanted to discuss it later. They were afraid of being called liars or considered “weird.” Yet countless Americans, including Navy and Air Force pilots, have reported seeing UFOs over the years. A 2021 Gallup poll found that more than 40 percent of Americans believe that UFOs are alien spacecraft visiting Earth from other planets or galaxies.

Are there aliens? Or are there different explanations for UFO sightings? Even the U.S. government wants answers. It has spent years secretly investigating the phenomena.

“When you see something in the sky that’s not an airplane, balloon, or bird, you scratch your head and wonder, ‘OK, so what is it?,’ ” says Luis Elizondo. He once led a secret program that investigated UFOs for the U.S. Department of Defense. “Our job was to figure that out.”

For as long as humans have walked on Earth, people have gazed up at the sky and wondered what might be out there. But our fascination with all things extraterrestrial really took off after the development of modern rockets in the mid-20th century. Imaginary alien encounters played out in movies, TV shows, and books and on the radio (see “UFOs Through the Ages,” below).

America’s first well-known UFO sighting occurred in 1947. A pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine circular objects near Mount Rainier in Washington State. He calculated that they were flying at least 1,200 miles per hour—fast enough to cross five football fields in one second. His story generated headlines. Newspapers described the objects as “flying saucers,” a term that is still sometimes used today.  

Around the same time, a pile of wreckage was found in the desert near a military base in Roswell, New Mexico. Was it the remains of an alien spaceship? Some people thought so. But U.S. officials said the debris was from a weather balloon that had crashed. 

America’s first well-known UFO sighting occurred in 1947. A pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine circular objects near Mount Rainier in Washington State. He calculated that they were flying at least 1,200 miles per hour. That is fast enough to cross five football fields in one second. His story led to headlines. Newspapers described the objects as “flying saucers.” That term is still sometimes used today.

Around the same time, a pile of wreckage was found in the desert near a military base in Roswell, New Mexico. Was it the remains of an alien spaceship? Some people thought so. But U.S. officials said the debris was from a weather balloon that had crashed.

By 1948, UFO fever was sweeping the nation. Sightings multiplied. The U.S. Air Force began an investigation. The conclusion was that at least some UFOs were probably sophisticated spy aircraft. At the time, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were engaged in the Cold War (1947-1991). That was a period of tension and hostility between the two superpowers. So it made sense to U.S. officials that the Soviets were spying by air.

Still, the number of UFO reports kept climbing. In 2007, the U.S. government secretly started a special program to investigate the sightings. It was led by Elizondo. Sometimes, what people thought were UFOs were just optical illusions, tricks of the eye. They were caused by sunlight or clouds (see photo above). Other times, they were drones or special military planes.

But some UFOs cannot easily be explained away, says Elizondo. For example, U.S. Navy and Air Force pilots have described seeing odd-shaped objects without visible wings or engines. They move at sharp angles. They seem to defy gravity.

“Whatever they are,” says Elizondo, “they do not fit our current understanding of aircraft technology.”

Humans have explored only a tiny fraction of our galaxy, the Milky Way. We know very little about what lies deeper in space. But each year, scientists discover more planets billions of miles from Earth. No one knows what—or who!—we may one day find on them.

Many astronomers have become increasingly convinced that extraterrestrial life of some kind likely does exist somewhere in the universe. But they are quick to point out that we don’t know what form it might take. It could be anything from a microorganism to an intelligent creature. Or it could be something hard to imagine. (In other words, what we may picture as green-skinned aliens could actually be . . . bacteria.)

“[There] is something unknown in our skies,” says Ravi Kopparapu. He is a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “We should be investigating it. We should be collecting data and then try to understand what they are.”

The mystery of UFOs made headlines again in 2017, when The New York Times revealed the existence of the secret UFO program at the Department of Defense. (The government now prefers the term Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs.) The newspaper later published three videos of actual encounters between military pilots and unexplained objects in the sky. 

One of the videos, shot by a U.S. Navy plane in 2015, shows an object zooming over the ocean off the East Coast. “Wow, what is that, man?” says the Navy pilot. “Look at it fly!”

The videos caused such a stir that Congress ordered the Department of Defense to produce a report explaining what was going on. But that document, published last summer, offered few answers. 

The mystery of UFOs made headlines again in 2017. That is when The New York Times revealed that the Department of Defense had a secret UFO program. (The government now prefers the term Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs.) The newspaper later published three videos of actual encounters between military pilots and unexplained objects in the sky.

One of the videos was shot by a U.S. Navy plane in 2015. It shows an object zooming over the ocean off the East Coast. “Wow, what is that, man?” says the Navy pilot. “Look at it fly!”

The videos caused a big stir. So Congress ordered the Department of Defense to produce a report explaining what was going on. That document was published last summer. But it offered few answers.

Officials examined 144 unexplained phenomena from the past two decades, most of them recorded or seen by members of the U.S. military. Of these, the officials could definitively explain only one. (It was “a large deflating balloon.”) The other 143 could potentially be birds, drones, secret foreign or U.S. military planes, or “atmospheric phenomena” (such as strange weather events), the report stated. 

Yet officials also included a category called “other” for observations they could not characterize. Among them were 18 incidents in which unusual movement patterns were observed. (For example, the object accelerated faster than U.S. military aircraft are capable of or seemed to change direction and drop suddenly.) 

Nowhere did the report mention the word aliens.

Officials examined 144 unexplained phenomena from the past two decades. Most were recorded or seen by U.S. military members. Of these, the officials could fully explain only one. (It was “a large deflating balloon.”) The other 143 could potentially be birds, drones, secret foreign or U.S. military planes, or “atmospheric phenomena” (such as strange weather events), the report stated.

Yet officials also included a category called “other” for observations they could not characterize. Among them were 18 incidents in which unusual movement patterns were observed. (For example, the object sped up faster than U.S. military aircraft are capable of. Or it seemed to change direction and drop suddenly.)

Nowhere did the report mention the word aliens.

The government’s findings were uncertain. That left many people who are eager to find out more dissatisfied, including some lawmakers. In December 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bill that, among other things, allows for the creation of a new office. The office will collect, analyze, and investigate reports of UAPs. It will be required to give reports to Congress on a regular basis.

In the meantime, scientists say, keep looking toward the sky.

“If you see something that is unknown or unexplainable, don’t hesitate to ask questions,” says Kopparapu, the NASA scientist. “You never know what you’ll find.”