What Are UFOs, Really?

The best answer at present: "We don't know."

The truth is we really do not know what UFOs are. We also don’t know why they are experienced by so many people, today and throughout history. Nor do we know where they are from or what purpose they serve, and to whom or what they answer.

Even so, going from the science – going from what we really know about UFOs – we have an excellent idea of what they seem to be. The evidence suggests UFOs are extraordinary and artificial objects that behave as if they were under intelligent control. They also are acting on humanity and society in ways that we only are beginning to understand.

Of course, these explanations or descriptions may or may not hold for all of what has been reported and recorded in what investigators term: the Phenomena. The US Government reports hard evidence that shows UFOs behave in ways that current science does not understand. These ways include:

• Anti-gravity lift for wingless flight

• Sudden and instantaneous acceleration and/or change of direction

• Hypersonic velocities, without leaving heat signatures or making shock waves

• Low observability, or cloaking

• Trans-medium travel, moving from air to space or to water environments

Most importantly, reports indicate the Phenomena acts in an intelligent manner, often interacting with witnesses or counteracting witness actions. In some cases, it appears the Phenomenon reads the newspapers, keeping current with popular understanding.

Researcher Jacques Vallee, a computer scientist and author of many of the most important books on the subject of UFO, describes in Passport to Magonia how in 1897-98, people across North America reported seeing an airship with a brilliant searchlight on the front flying over on what one of their occupants claimed was a tour, but “We’ll be in Cuba tomorrow!”

During World War 2, Allied and Axis pilots reported strange lights following their aircraft, the “Foo Fighters.” In 1946, the year after World War 2, many people in Scandinavia reported seeing ghostly rockets cross the night sky. In the United States, officials reported “Green Fireballs” visiting nuclear research facilities. After the press paraphrased the description Kenneth Arnold gave on June 24, 1947 of “nine objects that looked like a saucer skipping along the water,” people began to report flying saucers.

In a number of cases, the interactions almost appear humorous, as well. For example, during the recent Chinese spy balloon episode, people reported a number of UFO sightings at the same time as the Chinese balloon crossed over North America. Adding to the eeriness of the subject, the U.S. Air Force reported they shot down the spy balloon off the coast of Virginia and, in separate incidents, two UFOs, one over Alaska and the other over Lake Huron.

Almost all the unusual things reported as UFOs have mundane explanations. People have mistaken airplanes, helicopters, drones, satellites, rocket launches and many other man-made objects for UFOs. But not all of the reports can be explained with what we know.

In a number of reports, the interactions have been deadly for witnesses. The Residium discusses three important cases: click here to read “Fatal Encounters with UFOs.”

Dr. Vallee believes the answer to what UFOs are may be stranger than anything we have imagined so far. In his work, he explains that witnesses often report things that do not behave as would actual voyagers from another planet, solar system or galaxy. Perhaps the intelligence behind UFOs can travel across space and time. Perhaps these powers are from earth or from another universe, hidden in another dimension. Perhaps UFOs serve as angelic messengers.

The Residium also is interested in the reports that are left after taking out that which can be explained. That is, we search for the unexplained, the signal hiding in the noise, the needle in the haystack, and that which cannot be explained.

About the images in this post: Directly above is an image from the James Webb Space Telescope examining a tightly bound pair of actively forming stars (at the center of the red spikes), termed Herbig-Haro 46/47. The image of what resembles a question mark at the top of the post is a detail from the larger JWST photo. Some astronomers believe the reddish structure, found just to the right of center along the bottom of the big field picture, is likely a very distant, and thus very old, galaxy. Its familiar shape may be the result of two objects that happen to align from our perspective.