These are the regions where most UFO sightings occur

Extraterrestrials?

March 20, 2024 3:26 p.m. Robert Klatt

The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) has recorded approximately 98,000 UFO sightings. Researchers have now investigated in which regions these phenomena occur most frequently.

Salt Lake City (United States). UFO sightings occur regularly in the United States. The Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) recently investigated unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). Researcher of University of Utah In cooperation with the Pentagon, we published a study that examines in which regions the most UFOs are seen and what factors influence sighting reports.

According to the publication in the specialist magazine Scientific reports The study is based on 98,000 UFO sightings recorded by the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) between 2001 and 2020. Based on this data, researchers led by Richard Medina calculated whether there were positive correlations between factors such as light pollution, tree cover and proximity to airports and the number of UFO sightings. This allowed them to determine whether their numbers would increase if there were more opportunities.

“The idea is that if you are lucky enough to see something, you are more likely to see unexplained phenomena in the sky. There is more technology than ever in the sky, so the question arises: what are people actually seeing? »

Environmental factors and airports influence UFO sightings

The analyzed data shows that military installations and airports as well as various environmental factors strongly influence the number of UFO sightings. According to the authors, this explains why most UFO sightings have been reported in the western United States, a region with lots of open land, several large military bases and dark skies.

Only one of the influencing factors examined, cloud cover, had no influence on reported UFO sightings. Researchers previously thought that more clouds would cause more light to be scattered and thus the number of luminous celestial phenomena, often interpreted as UFOs, would increase.

No verifiability of reports

The researchers also explain that NUFORC UFO reports are self-reports primarily from lay people. The reports therefore cannot be verified. However, the trends observed in the study suggest that the journalists actually made an observation that was inexplicable to them.

Scientific Reports, doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-49527-x