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According to data from the National UFO Reporting Center, the state of California has been named the best place to visit for a chance at spotting a UFO. Since 1998, there have been 15,457 UFO reports, from saucer-shaped objects in the sky to strange lights flying erratically at night.
The data was collected and analyzed by online travel publication Travel Lens and in second place was Florida, quite some way behind the Golden State with 7,790 reported UFO sightings over the last 24 years. Perhaps extraterrestrials enjoy bathing in the glow of our modest yellow dwarf star.
A spokesperson for Travel Lens said in a press release, "It may come as a surprise to some that California takes the top spot by some distance when it comes to the number of UFO reports. There have been almost 5,000 reports worldwide this year and counting, which shows that there is still a very clear belief in UFOs.'
Number of UFO reports
1. California, 15457
2. Florida. 7790
3. Washington, 6885
4. Texas, 5805
5. New York, 5618
6. Pennsylvania, 4769
7. Arizona, 4735
8. Ohio, 4244
9. Illinois, 4111
10. Michigan, 3485
The idea of UFOs and alien abductions has always given rise to intrigue, mystery and inevitably conspiracy theories. Our imagination has created all manner of ideas about what visitors from another planet may want from us, ranging from Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Independence Day all the way to the scariest alien abduction in cinematic history as seen in Fire in the Sky.
The state of New Mexico is usually what most folk think of when it comes to flying saucer sightings and reports of little green (or grey) men. The small town of Roswell, with a population of just over 47,000, is something of a legend in the UFO community as it was allegedly the site of a UFO crash in 1974, which in turn gave rise to all manner of tales regarding autopsies of alien creatures, weird other-worldly technology and of course, velcro. But as you can see, New Mexico hasn't even made the top 10.
The thing to remember is that the state of California borders on the state of Nevada and not too far from that state line is the Groom Lake testing facility, home to Lockheed's "Skunk Works" — a prototype aircraft development facility and more commonly known as Area 51. So is it possible that many of these sightings are simply experimental aircraft flying over the Mojave Desert, Death valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountains? Yes. Yes, it is.
That said, only this week NASA announced it will form a team to investigate UFO sightings. Using unclassified data, the team will "lay the groundwork for future study" of UFOs by examining how the data is gathered by the public, local government, law enforcement and other sources. The aim is to have something resembling a roadmap for future analysis on unidentified flying objects and ultimately determine which events are natural and which are not.