Flying saucers: Proof of alien life or a storm in a teacup?

The return of sci-fi series The X-Files has reignited our obsession with whether “the truth is out there”. The CIA recently published its UFO files online, encouraging people to “take a peek into our X-Files”.

US Coast Guard photograph of “flying saucers” over Salem in 1952.

The return of the much-loved sci-fi series The X-Files has reignited our obsession with whether “the truth is really out there”. And the CIA recently published its UFO files online for the first time, encouraging people to “take a peek into our X-Files”.

Since the end of the Cold War, people have trained their eyes skyward looking for anything unfamiliar or suspicious. Instead of objects launched by the enemy, many people claimed to have seen unexplainably weird things that they reported to the authorities.

US government agencies have been inundated with reports that had to be investigated, with most proving to be easily explained by natural or man-made phenomena. A few were truly inexplicable, which gave rise to something of an unidentified flying objects mania in the 1950s and ’60s.

The files show that most had earthly explanations, but conspiracy theorists will continue to speculate.

Aboriginal Wandjina rock-style paintings from Kimberley in Western Australia.

Mysterious objects were seen in the sky thousands of years before the CIA existed. Prehistoric cave paintings and carvings show flying objects and even men wearing what appear to be space suits, such as the Aboriginal Wandjina figures. In ancient times any inexplicable object in the air was generally interpreted as supernatural, a visitation of the gods.

Most were probably terrestrial phenomena like optical illusions, meteorites or lightning. But others were more puzzling, like the ancient Roman account of glowing ships in the sky from 218BC.

Occasional sightings of mysterious lights or objects in the sky seemed to increase in World War II, when people were on the alert for enemy planes.

Some sightings turned out to be rockets and other experimental weapons or aircraft being tested. One peculiar series of sightings involved “flying balls” menacing aircraft. American pilots dubbed them “foo fighters”.

Many scientists now believe that foo fighters were either surface-to-air weapons fired at the aircraft or just strange forms of electrical discharge, like St Elmo’s fire.

But it planted ideas of extraterrestrial craft in the minds of the public.

As the world moved into the Cold War people never got out of the habit of nervously watching the heavens, and saw more unusual aircraft and objects, again many of them experimental military weapons and aircraft.

In June 1947 American aviator and businessman Kenneth Arnold reported seeing disc-shaped objects while flying near Mt Rainier in Washington.

He later said that they moved “like saucers skipping on water”. They were quickly dubbed “flying saucers”, a name that stuck.

In July that same year a paper reported that the military had found a “flying disc” near Roswell in New Mexico in the US. The military later retracted that press release and said that the object found was a weather balloon. However people later interpreted the retraction as a cover-up.

But the words “flying disc” and “flying saucer” firmly wedged in the public consciousness. Suddenly the number of sightings boomed. People even began reporting having contact with or being abducted by aliens.

In 1948 the US Air Force began Project Sign to investigate unidentified aircraft and objects. This would later become Project Blue Book. Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Blue Book, coined the term unidentified flying object, or UFO.

Project Blue Book continued up until 1969 when it was dismantled after physicist Edward Condon, who helped to compile a report that concluded there was no evidence of anything but earthly origins for the sightings and the phenomenon didn’t warrant further investigation.

Originally published as Flying saucers: Proof of alien life or a storm in a teacup?