Looking For a Link Between Sci-Fi UFOs and UFO Reports

NewsWatcher writes "The BBC has an interesting story about the link between sightings of UFOs and sci-fi films. From the article: 'Documents from the Ministry of Defence released by the National Archives show the department recorded 117 sightings in 1995 and 609 in 1996.' Those years correlate with the screening of the film Independence Day (1996) and when The X-Files was at the height of its popularity in the UK (1995). 'The more that alien life is covered in films or television documentaries, the more people look up at the sky and don't look down at their feet,' said an expert on UFO sightings based at Sheffield Hallam University."

Comments

i wonder ...

[neonprimetime]

... if there is also a link then between Government Conspiracy Theories & shows like the x-files?

Of course

[geekoid]

people see what they have been thinking about.

For example: when you buy a new car, all of a sudden you see that same model car everywhere.

Add to that peoples inability to think critically, and you get UFO's.

Re:Of course

[maxume]

My favorite is when the serious conspiracy theorists trot out the fact that the Air Force had an officer making reports about UFO sightings to the president. Of course, this was during a period when the United States was developing a variety of secret aircraft, so it stands to reason that the Air Force was keeping track of people who saw unidentified flying objects.

And your word for today is...

[fiannaFailMan]

Pareidolia

Re:Movies and imagination

[AP31R0N]

If you see an OBJECT, that is FLYING, and you can't IDENTIFY it (making it UNIDENTIFIED)... it *is* a UFO (relative to me).

That blurry, fast moving thing in the sky that i can't recognize is a UFO.

UFO does not state or imply that the object is or might be alien... that's a leap people make on their own. If i say "i saw a UFO", i am NOT saying i saw something from outer space, just that it was in the air and i don't know what it was. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Alien Web Profit

[blhack]

Or much more likely:

1: Find a planet full of potentially exploitable resources that can possibly support life
2: Seed it with basic life
3: Wait for the life to evolve
4: Oh, yep, it can support life
5: Move in
6: Profit.

One of the silliest things that humans seem to get stuck in their heads is that other creatures would have the same sort of life expectancy as we do. Animals on our own planet have drastically varying lifespans and we all evolved from the same goop.

Start thinking about having a lifespan in the hundreds of millions of years (or no lifespan at all...something like...oh, I don't know, a machine/biological hyrbid intelligence) and suddenly those lightyears which seem SOOOOOOOO FAR are not so far any more.

Re:A slip?

[catbertscousin]

As a nit pic, Angels would be aliens for all intents and purposes, as would God.

I am an atheist, so don't construe this as defending someone imaginary man in the sky, or Santa Clause.

I dunno . . . I think it depends on your concept of the universe. I would think beings from another planet within the physical universe would be aliens, while beings from outside of (apart from, however you want to put it) the physical universe would be something else.