Sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), formerly known as unidentified flying objects (UFOs), have been reported throughout history. Given the potential security and safety risks they pose, as well as scientific curiosity, there is increasing interest in understanding what these sighting reports represent. Scientists from the University of Utah and the U.S. Department of Defense approached this problem as an important one of the human experience and that can be examined through a geographical lens: what local factors may increase or decrease the number of sighting reports? They used data from the National UFO Research Center, and included 98,000 total sighting reports over a 20-year period, from 2001 to 2020. For each county in the contiguous U.S., they analyzed two conditions: sky view potential, which refers to the area’s light pollution, cloud cover and tree canopy cover; and the potential for objects to be present in the sky, meaning the proximity to airports and military installations. The majority of sightings were in western parts of the U.S. due to the region’s physical geography — lots of wide-open spaces and dark skies.
“The idea is that if you have a chance to see something, then it’s more likely that you’re going to see unexplained phenomena in the sky,” said Dr. Richard Medina, a geographer at the University of Utah.
“There’s more technology in the sky than ever before so the question is: What are people actually seeing?”
“It’s a tough question to answer, and it is an important one because any uncertainty can be a potential threat to national security.”
“Understanding the environmental context of these sightings will make it easier to find explanations for their occurrence and help identify truly anomalous objects that are a legitimate threat.”
Dr. Medina and his colleagues looked at the number of sightings per 10,000 people per county and identified significant clusters of low numbers of reports (cold…
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